Mise en Abyme, Vol. VII, Issue 1, January/June 2020 by journal.abyme

Mise en Abyme International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts Vol. VII, Issue 1 January-June 2020 Special Monographic Issue – Make a Move (Published in April 2020) General Editors Armando Rotondi – Institute of the Arts Barcelona Elisa Sartor – University of Verona Issue Editor Armando Rotondi – Institute of the Arts Barcelona Editorial Office Elena Dal Maso – University of Venice Ca’ Foscari (Italy); Giulia Ferro Milone – University of Verona (Italy); Renzo Miotti – University of Verona (Italy); Anita Paolicchi – University of Pisa (Italy); Valentina Temussi – Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University (Spain/UK); Freya Treutmann – Institute of the Arts Barcelona (Spain); Alessandro Valenzisi – University of Strathclyde (UK); Ida Libera Valicenti – University of Bucharest (Romania) Advisory Board Beatrice Alfonzetti – University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy); Raffaella Bertazzoli – University of Verona (Italy); Alessandra De Martino Cappuccio – University of Warwick (UK); Joseph Farrell – University of Strathclyde (UK); Srecko Jurisic – University of Split (Croatia); Gaetana Marrone – Princeton University (USA); José María Micó – Pompeu Fabra University (Spain); Mariantonietta Picone – University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy); Elena Pîrvu – University of Craiova (Romania); Pasquale Sabbatino – University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy); Antonio Saccone – University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy); Álvaro Salvador – University of Granada (Spain); Roxana Utale – University of Bucharest (Romania) Mise en Abyme Logo Nicoletta Preziosi Proof Reader/Editor for this Issue Julia Battersby Publisher Mise en Abyme/IDEA Academic partnership with Institute of the Arts Barcelona Contact information Armando Rotondi: a.rotondi@iabarcelona.es Elisa Sartor: elisa.sartor@univr.it Submission of contributions and material for review purposes journal.abyme@gmail.com Web address www.journalabyme.com “Mise en Abyme” is officially recognised as an academic journal by ANVUR and is indexed on the following indexing sources: WorldCat — Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) — Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) — JURN Directory — IngentaConnect — Directory of Research Journals Indexing (DRJI) — Internet Archive. All work in “Mise en Abyme” is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Non-Commercial International License. ISSN: 2284-3310 All works are blind peer-reviewed. This publication was developed as part of the Make a Move – An Art Incubator for European non-institutionalised and independent theatre project and co-founded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The Make a Move – An Art Incubator project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

January-June 2020 Vol. VII, Issue 1 ISSN: 2284-3310

Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe Edited by Armando Rotondi

Special Monographic Issue Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe

January-June 2020 Vol. VII, Issue 1 ISSN: 2284-3310

About MAKE A MOVE – AN ART INCUBATOR FOR CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN NON-INSTITUTIONALISED AND INDEPENDENT THEATRE The Make a Move project executed and tested an innovative Art Incubator program. This program was designed particularly for non-institutionalised theatre practitioners and small independent cultural operators, primarily from the field of contemporary movement-based theatre. The first group of 10 full-time resident artists and collectives included, in total, 15 individual resident artists, as well as 30 local and regional artists from twelve (12) European countries (Austria, Croatia, Ireland, France, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain). These artists had the opportunity to develop their artistic and professional skills, and grow their production proposals through co-creation processes in collaboration with international group of artists. The Art Incubator was implemented in 2019 across three cities: Galway (April / May), Rijeka (September) and Târgu-Mureș (December). The project produced – to various stages of development – 22 new contemporary theatre productions, 14 of which were presented as work-in-progress presentations to audiences in three of the project partners’ countries: 12 scratch pieces in Ireland including several 360 videos as Last Person Standing by Anne Corté, The Worm by Liza Cox, Shipwreck by Ivana Peranić, Meditations by Gráinne O’Carroll, From a Distance by Rodrigo Pardo and Eva Maria Hofer – a piece that combined the distant view of someone in a faraway field, with very intimate audio on loneliness through headphones, Riot by Nicole Pschetz – a choreographed interactive performance, Next to Me by James Riordan with Nicole Pschetz – an intimate audio installation, Whispers of Synge by Cathal McGuire and Anja Kersten – a bi-lingual audio-visual performance lecture, The Game by Sébastien Loesener, Yucef Zraibi, Dmitri Rekatchevski, Eileen McClory, Sandra González Bandera, Conor Geoghegan and Orlaith Ní Chearra – a projection an digital mapping performance in a handball alley, Choose a Side by Jony Rogers – Kinect motion sensor and audio interactive performance, Lost in Translation by Maria Gill – a performance using voice-translation technology, and Mud and Iron by Deise Nunes – a short video performance, some of which were presented at a public showing in Galway City on May 3rd 2019; 4 site-specific works in Croatia: durational performance I’m Listening in a shop window, Rijeka’s Roof performance that took audiences to the roof of the shopping mall, Last Summer a minimalistic performance in a shop window, and And Then There Was a Space, fragments of a transformation inspired with the space of the Opera (Teatro Fenice) that was opening its doors to the general public for the first time after almost three decades on 17 th September 2019; 6 contemporary theatre pieces in Romania: post-talk show on series of overheard conversations in public transport I can‘t talk/ Nu pot vorbi/ Nem tudok beszélni, sound exploration performance The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking, live cooking performance Minor Chefs, mime parody The added value of mime for intercultural conflicts, a living breathing installation of personal and collective mythology Clouds Passing By and a sound piece Perspectives. The project identified more than 10 new cooperation opportunities and initiated applications to sources of funding producing a target of several theatre productions for display at European Capital of Culture occasions in Rijeka (Croatia) and Galway (Ireland). The initiator and leader of the project is an arts organisation – Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre KRILA from Rijeka, directed by Ivana Peranić. The main partners of the project are the Galway Theatre Festival (Ireland), the Institute of Arts Barcelona (Spain), the University of Arts Târgu-Mureș (Romania). The associate partners are ACTS (Oslo, Norway), MOVEO (Barcelona, Spain), Platform 88 (Montpellier, France), Poulpe Èlectrique (Arcueil, France), ToTum TeaTre (Barcelona, Spain) and Workinglifebalance Ltd. (Graz, Austria). The project has been co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, RIJEKA 2020 LLC, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Kultura nova Foundation, City of Rijeka, Primorje-Gorski kotar County, Austrian Cultural Forum Zagreb, the European Capital of Culture Galway 2020, the Galway City Council, the Arts Council of Ireland, the Ajuntament de Sitges and the French Institute Barcelona. The Make a Move project has been developed under the European Capital of Culture programme – Rijeka 2020: Port of Diversity, project “Unreal Cities”.

Special Monographic Issue Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe

January-June 2020 Vol. VII, Issue 1 ISSN: 2284-3310

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface: How this work is structured Armando Rotondi

p. 7

Introduction: An overview of the definition of the theoretical-historical framework of “non-institutionalised” or “independent” theatre Valentina Temussi

p. 9

PART I – ESSAYS Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres Daria Lavrennikov Institute of the Arts Barcelona

p. 13

A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 39

PART II – CASE STUDIES Spectacular ad hoc structures as a further step in the collective creation: The Make a Move project Eugen Păsăreanu University of Arts Târgu-Mureș

p. 69

Tappeto Volante and the site-specific as an event Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 73

Teatro de Los Sentidos and the “theatre of experience” Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 79

Wild Theatre and the establishment of a non-institutionalised theatre company in an emergency extra-EU context Lyudmyla Honcharova University of Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo

p. 83

Rimini Protokoll and the use of digital Freya Treutmann Institute of the Arts Barcelona

p. 89

Frantic Assembly versus Le Vieux Colombier theatre model Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 95

Table of contents

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PART III – FOCUS How do European theatre creators take the audience into consideration? Raluca Blaga University of Arts Târgu-Mureș

p. 101

An understanding of terminology and the need of a specific glossary Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords Traian Penciuc University of Arts Târgu-Mureș

p. 113

p. 119

PART IV – MAPPING A selection of European theatre and performance festivals Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 139

A selection of market events for performing arts Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 157

A selection of Europe-based companies/artists Valentina Temussi/Daria Lavrennikov Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 161

A selection of Europe-based research and training centres in the field of non-institutionalised, independent, physical, and movement-based theatre Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 181

A selection of Europe-based international networks, websites and cross-regional bodies (private and public) for performing arts funding Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 185

A selection of national European institutions involved in the promotion of culture, including performing arts, through support, advocacy, funding and grants information Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University

p. 197

Table of contents

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Preface: How this work is structured Armando Rotondi

As an academic and practitioner I have always considered research and best practice as a mix of theoretical and practical elements that complement each other. To use a metaphor, I have always considered books and articles as the bricks with which, as professionals, we build our practice. At the same time, our practice forms the foundations for new frameworks. For this reason, I firmly believe it is essential not only to work with practical advice and information, but also to have a strong grasp of the theory that may be applied to the practice. This work has been developed with both aspects in mind, mapping practice onto theory. It is divided in four main parts. Part I refers to the theoretical framework pertaining to non-institutionalised and independent theatre, addressing the following main aspects: 1. Artistic Excellence; 2. Business Model (including Audience development). These aspects are investigated in accordance to the ones defined by the Make a Move project steering committee members: non-institutionalized theatre practitioners from 5 European countries (Croatia, France, Norway, Austria, Spain) that sketched out the target group needs during the three Make a Move project development workshops (Rijeka, December 2016, June and October 2017) and proposed the topics of Artistic Excellence, Business, and Audience Development. The Artistic Excellence section first considers the definitions of non-institutionalised and independent theatre, seeking a definition that works across Europe’s many different geographical and cultural contexts. At the same time, the goal of this section is to propose potential parameters of artistic excellence in terms of social and philosophical – as well as aesthetic – terms. This section also includes an analysis of the needs of the target group. The Business Model section, which dovetails with elements of Audience Profiling and Development, proposes a possible approach that moves away from the perspective of the experiential economy and marketing. Here I think it is important to propose a specific model – Armando Rotondi Preface: How this work is structured

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that can be of course criticised or not completely considered by the target group â&#x20AC;&#x201C;, applied within the chapter to theatre realities. In this section there is also a profile of the audience that, according to the business framework, is categorised using different terminology: audience, visitor, client, user, consumer and customer. Part II and III include specific case studies and further analysis of the themes addressed to date. Part IV maps the international environment onto a specific selection list in order to facilitate the work of fundraising and partnership. The list focuses on festivals, companies/artists, research and training centres, private and public bodies involved in performing arts funding, performing arts market events and national institutes that support performing arts abroad.

Armando Rotondi Preface: How this work is structured

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Introduction: An overview of the definition of the theoretical-historical framework of “non-institutionalised” or “independent” theatre Valentina Temussi

In terms of theatrical history, for the 20th century is considered the golden age of the mise en scène (which literally means ‘to place on stage’) which emerged during the last twenty years of the previous century. By creating the Théâtre Libre in March 1887, André Antoine positioned himself as the first director of modern times and placed the issue of the mise en scène at the centre of every theatrical challenge. From this point on, the director became aware of his specific role in the process of theatre making – a role that helped to lend more weight to the theatrical process and permit less dependency on the text. At around the same time, during his work staging a Wagnerian opera, Adolphe Appia had just outlined a first theory of the mise en scène. Appia defined this as the art of projecting into space what the playwright could only conceive in time. Jacques Copeau, with his theatrical, took the definition to a higher level, emphasising the meaning and importance of the mise en scène, even further, declaring it to be “an ensemble of technical elements” that make possible the transition from the world of the ideas and the written text to the concrete life of the scene. As the 19th century progressed, a range of different theories and practices of staging continued to emerge. These included: 1. Copeau and the Cartel (Dullin, Jouvet, Baty, Pitoeff) promoting harmony between the text and the staging, for a theatre at the service of the public. 2. Appia and G. Craig becoming the prophets of the modern mise en scène, where the idea of a total theatre takes root (the order of priority for Appia is actor-space-light-colour). 3. Artaud, unhappy with the work done in collaboration with the Cartel, coming to the conclusion that the mise en scène, alone, is the most theatrical part of the performance.

Valentina Temussi Introduction: An overview of the definition of the theoretical-historical framework

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4. The advent of Expressionism, especially in Germany, which took the form of using the scene to express and symbolise its theoretical idea of the unconscious. The golden age of staging came to an end in the early 1950s – but the mise en scène revolution, while it lasted, had a significant impact on many other aspects of the theatre. Not least of these was the concept that the space is not only expressed by the scenography – but also by the movement of the actor on stage and his relationship with the space around him. It is important to point out that many theatre practitioners of the beginning of last century, – for example, Stanislavski, Mejerchold, Craig, Appia, Copeau and, later, Artaud – plus other pedagogues/creators, like Laban, Dalcroze and later Decroux, were grappling with similar issues. These included: a. The work of the actor on stage; b. The role of the actor in the creative process; c) The relationship between actor, text, space and rhythm. Since 1945, the mise en scène has no longer been just a matter of giving life to the text on stage. The director does not like to be limited to the role of adapting a classic text to the scene. Instead, he sees his role as one of critical re-interpreter of the text and increasingly as a dramaturgist, rewriting or writing from scratch, reinforced by all the technical and practical aspects of the scene. This work is done either by assembling texts from various sources, or by producing an original text – as seen in the work of Grotowski, Robert Wilson and Peter Brook. There are also collaborations on the part of companies, such the Living Theatre or Ariane Mnouchkine and her Théâtre du Soleil. A new dramaturgy model influences the work of the actor who must learn to become more and more creative in the work of devising and/or staging a performance. The notion of an ensemble, so dear to Copeau and Lecoq, is fundamental in a theatre that no longer relies on written text, but is driven by the practical and tangible elements of the scene, including the actor’s body. One sign of this is the diversification of the theatre spaces, or the complete disappearance of the theatrical space in its classical meaning. Increasingly, towards the end of twentieth century, we begin to see

the performing arts industry play a fundamental role in the change and

diversification of the theatre space – and this, in turn, influencing the role of the audience.

Valentina Temussi Introduction: An overview of the definition of the theoretical-historical framework

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Essays

Special Monographic Issue Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe

January-June 2020 Vol. VII, Issue 1 ISSN: 2284-3310

Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres Daria Lavrennikov Institute of the Arts Barcelona Abstract: The following contribution integrates the research and mapping process of some foundational aspects characterising, conditioning, and transforming the transitory and evolving field of movement based independent theatre in Europe today. The material is simultaneously analytical, critical and didactic, directed towards independent performing arts makers and collectives, as well as operators, working both locally and internationally throughout Europe. We move between theory and practice, placing the themes of process based art making, producing, teaching, curating, managing, international entrepreneurship and performing arts studies, in dialogue. This allows us to reveal and understand the interdependence of these practices and roles for the emerging fields of the performing and live arts that harbor movement based theatre. The objective is to offer an accessible and evolving tool box for reflection and action in this transdisciplinary field. Keywords: Independent theatre, non-institutionalised theatre; physical theatre, movement-based theatre, parameters of artistic excellence, participation, new practices, post-dramatic. *****

1. A preliminary statement As a result of the desk research released at the conference organised by the Institute of the Arts Barcelona in February 2019, and as part of the Make a Move Creative Europe 1 research process (team), we came to some open ended conclusions and questions, including: 1.

What we are, in fact, talking about here is potentially more suitable, in this day and age, to refer to as “inter-dependent theatres” instead of “non-institutionalised” or “independent theatres”. This means, we recognise that it is a field that incorporates

Also referred to in the Make a Move project as non-institutionalized theatre Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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the independent, the collective, and the private, public and cooperative categories of structures, institutions and sectors. 2.

One of the greatest challenges of this research is to insist on finding ways of making the discussion relevant, without it being generic, for the wide diversity of humanscapes and landscapes, physical and psycho-geographies and cultures, and sociopolitical and economic realities that make up what we call contemporary Europe.

The notion of and percentage of dependence, interdependence, and independence from private and public institutions, – and what is referred to as institutionalised and non-institutionalised – greatly varies depending on the region of Europe. This includes the use of a wide range of funding formats: crowdfunding, sponsorship from the city, region, government, private funders, as well as a diversity of new entrepreneurial models that include start ups and the creation of pedagogical, artistic and production structures, networks, centres and festivals.

This diversity is also reflected in the requirement to abide by different criteria set by the Ministry of Culture and/or multinational companies. It is likewise affected by the history and structure of its public arts policy, traditional work models, and performing arts administration and management.

These models are being transformed and becoming hybrid by virtue of growing numbers of artists and operators studying, working, networking and traveling abroad, sharing, expanding, exporting, importing and adapting knowledge, models and knowledge about international artistic entrepreneurship, cultural and artistic management, collaborative creative process, and curatorial approaches throughout Europe.

Throughout this work we contribute to the mapping process of the phenomenon, tracing the paradigms, fields, agents, formats, key features and terminology that accompany and aim at describing and encompassing the new, highly diversified and quickly evolving practices, processes and products that we refer to in this paper as “independent contemporary movement-based theatres” across Europe. To do this requires a cross-pollination and polyphony of perspectives and experiences, drawn from all disciplines – from artists and critics to theoreticians, managers and curators.

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This mapping process develops its depth of field over time and space, while accessing and identifying the tendencies, potentials, and necessities of independent artists and collectives of a transient contemporary theatre movement spanning an entire continent. Many of these artists and collectives describe themselves as committed to developing innovative, critical and quality work in the field of contemporary theatre, via experimenting, researching, networking, collaborating and sharing artistic tools and knowledge. Independent artists often struggle with a range of issues and desires, at the same time needing to mature and grow in terms of capacity building, furthering professional and artistic skills and grappling with the multiple stages of production â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from the initial idea, to pre-production, creation, production, communication and distribution.. Additionally there is the imperative to reach a larger audience, whether that be by way of international or socio-economic or cultural diversity. From the beginning of this research process, a central challenge has been to define this transient notion of contemporary movement based independent theatre within the context of Europe. There is a broad assortment of past and present manifestations in the diverse countries, cultures and quickly shifting political-economic realities and performing arts institutions that make up Europe today. Independent artists, companies and collectives of the movement based theatre field, work collaboratively with a range of arts, cultural, political and economic institutions and individuals. These artists, collectives and companies demonstrate a tendency towards hybridisation, intersections, crossovers, and diversions of artistic disciplines. They also exhibit varying degrees of dedication to critical thinking and micro political acts of dissent in response to contemporaneous states of crisis on a number of fronts. They are often directly or indirectly in dialogue with those working in the movement based fields of dance and performance. Many of these approaches, practices, and processes likewise identify with and/or fit into the categories of live, visual, performance and media arts. The following elements characterise the performing arts that seep into, and remain, in the blurred sector of movement based independent theatre, and its many subcategories - manifested in different aesthetic forms: 1.

The body as a driving force and central instrument for creation in its diverse states of presence and absence.

A commitment to and/or development of training and preparation practices and methods, many of which are rooted in movement (body) based techniques and approaches developed in the 20th century throughout Europe. This includes Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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exchange and fusion with approaches and techniques from different parts of the world beyond the West, that engage and shape a versatile and creative performeractor. 3.

A search for a broader range of venues for, and formats of, presentation, ranging from theatres to alternative spaces including museums and the streets â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this search extends to site-specific, immersive, work in progress, durational formats of presentation etc.

An exploration of diverse emerging dramaturgical approaches of a heterogeneous nature, that question, break down and drive innovation in dramatic conventions.

The creation and promotion of a multi-sensory, synesthetic and participatory aesthetics and experiences for the audience.

An interest in collaborative, collective and devised theatre making processes, with varying scales of hierarchical and horizontally oriented roles.

An interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach that seeks to establish innovative partnerships with the visual, media and sound arts, as well as other human and hard sciences.

Auto-didactic, self and group induced capacity building in the full creative and production cycles of each project, part of which is self-taught and collectively managed through start up phases of attempting, failing and succeeding.

A varied level of interdependency with public and private local, national, European and international funding bodies and institutions, including grants, resources, empowered fundraising, and support at all levels of the creative and production process. This is the case regardless of an artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s or companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-proclamation or position as an independent artist, independent of established performing arts and government institutions and establishments.

10. A commitment to building a diverse and authentic local, national and international professional and creative network (both within and beyond the performing arts) that acknowledges strength through interdependency and inter/trans culturalism. 11. Intercultural and transcultural collaborations of artists responding both to a growing global mobility and precariat in terms of labour, geographical inequalities and instability, as well as an interest in and commitment to diversity (in terms of culture,

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gender, race, age etc.). This becomes a generator of creative potential and micropolitical reflections on the state of the contemporary world. 12. A varying interest in â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and innovative responses to â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the emergence of new technologies and a hyper mediatised global environment via digital practices. 13. The growing precariat in the field of the performing arts, in conjunction with a greater capacity to access a wider, more diverse range of funding and fundraising (via public, private, national and international) strategies. Additionally, there is more access to an alternative arts economy (crowdfunding, co-ops, etc.). This includes a consumer based economy within the cultural industry. All these factors directly affect and expand who sets and determines the criteria and parameters for defining and evaluating artistic quality. Diversifying the range of sponsorship and support directly affects the nature of interdependent and independent relationships with community and sector. Each of these elements is part of a greater collective imagining, researching, testing and projecting of future alternative models (economically, socially, culturally and ecologically) for the arts that are more sustainable for artists, workers and the community. In other words, we are talking about a long term commitment to re-imagining and gradually transforming the established capitalist hierarchies and power structures into a more culturally based politics and economics. This new system is one where individuals have a fairer opportunity to benefit and participate in the form of direct actions, co-organisation and innovation, collaboration between sectors and closer interaction between artist and cultural operators. It gives rise to the potential for exchanging viewpoints, solving challenges and sharing tasks and responsibilities. As this list illustrates, over the last century there has been a constant commitment to collective experimentation and the construction of unique and innovative artistic languages and experiences for audiences. This has chiefly been achieved via diverse modes and methods of movement (and body) based artistic investigation in conjunction with aesthetic direction. Despite shared concerns and struggles, contemporary independent theatre is a phenomenon that is in flux. This is because it is a phenomenon that is sustained, characterised and enriched by artistic processes, forms and trajectories which, in our experience and conceptualisation of them, persist in their transience and hybrid nature. As with the body, it is a field of forces and relations in a continuous state of change. That is to say, that there is growing Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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plurality, multiplicity, mobility and synchronicity in the way that independent theatre artists, collectives, companies, and performing arts associations and centres understand, practice and delineate movement based theatre. This is the case not only throughout Europe, but globally. This is poetically illustrated by Peter Brook, in The Empty Space (1968) with the famous statement “Truth in the theatre is always on the move”. Additionally, this is a phenomenon and field in a constant state of emergence in dialogue with – and in response to – the economic, political, social, environmental, and technological changes that transform human modes of existence. This in turn influences our modes of thinking, creating, producing, communicating, making and sharing art. In one of the most recent books published on independent theatre in Europe – the outcome of an extensive research project organised by Manfred Brauneck and managed by the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute – structural changes in European theatre since the 1990s were investigated in depth. Brauneck begins the book Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe: Structures, Aesthetics, Cultural Policy (2017), considering the role of independent theatre, in relation to other theatre forms. He defines its transgressive and dissident nature over the last century as follows: Independent theatre takes place outside the established institutions, the repertory theatres or, as Otto Brahm called them, the ‘permanent stages’. It emerged as an alternative and in opposition to such theatres. In most European countries, it still represents a separate theatre culture, in its beginnings – in the 1960s – a preponderantly politically virulent, and sometimes even a subcultural sphere. Yet it always calls for contemporaneity and explores new paths, even transcending boundaries and conventions […] Above all, the independent theatre creates production conditions which make it largely independent of government subsidies, but also of commercial constraints, and in this way allow it to maintain a certain autonomy. At least, that was the original idea of the independents (Brauneck 2017: 13-17).

For both independent, as well as non-institutionalised theatre, we can identify the key elements as being: 1.

A call for contemporaneity;

A transgression of boundaries and conventions (disciplinary, cultural, political, social);

A desire and urgency to reinvent freedom and autonomy.

Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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Brauneck describes the notion of contemporaneity as the engagement and experimentation with new approaches, methods and modes of theatre making, taking us beyond conventional understandings and practices, and entering into a field of blurred boundaries in terms of disciplines, categories and creative process. This concept also includes experimentation with new approaches and methods in teaching, curation and entrepreneurship, interlaced with theatre making. It also directly connects with the concept of the artist or company building a nonconventional yet coherent strategy and vision around the following key questions: 1.

Why are you doing it?

Who are you doing it for?

What is your structure?

What is the local and international context you are dealing with (festivals, residencies, networks)?

This strategy affects the direction and decisions one takes and makes with preproduction, production, and post production (communication, distribution). Independent theatre has always operated in dialogue with other fields of arts and humanities, resulting in a common transgression of boundaries, conventions, and established norms, structures and aesthetics: The independent theatre also helped to ensure that the boundaries between different art forms became more permeable or even blurred. The relationship between art and everyday life was also under discussion; new forms of production and communication were tested. Even if developments in the fine arts were almost a decade ahead of those in the theatre, the direction they took was the same one. New visual and hybrid genres emerged whose action character shared an interface with the theatre […] above all when conceiving new space for performances. Essential to these new stage aesthetics was the reception of performance art, object and action art, pop art, happenings and those media interdisciplinary hybrid forms which have led to a kind of ‘theatricalisation’ of the fine arts. […] If a more or less stable consensus had existed up to the 1950s as to what art – what theatre as art – was, and what importance art and theatre should have for society, this consensus was revoked in connection with these dramatic changes, almost all aesthetic paradigms were scrutinised, and the social function of art was redefined and expanded (Brauneck 2017: 19).

Brauneck emphasises that, owing to changing circumstances of the times, independent theatre has constantly been in a state of transitivity, due to its permeability and critical dialogue

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with everyday life and contemporaneity in its artistic orientation and social positioning (2017: 14). It is important to recognise that what was once considered as “rebellious work” has now made its way into the international art market. Today we are witnessing that transgressing conventions and subverting social norms in certain contexts and cultural industries also sells well. In the book’s introduction, Brauneck points out how the structural and aesthetic changes in independent theatre in Europe have evolved in relation to shifting conventions and tendencies (2017: 14-18), as follows: 1.

A growth of alternative venues now both institutionalised and independent.

Evolution of artistic training of actors and directors, with an increase in highly professionalised and versatile performers.

Varying approaches to spectatorship and developing the notion of an “active audience”, audience diversity and development.

Critical thinking and an awareness of the socio-political reality, with positions varying from highly politicised towards a tendency to de-politisation, or micro-political approaches such as a “politics of perception” and “politics of participation”.

An increase in groups and artists locally, regionally and globally most typically in large cities.

Varying theatro-cultural circumstances throughout Europe, for example in the Soviet era, those governed by dictatorship until the 1970s, and those with a longer history of being “democratically governed”.

A multitude of artistic directions.

A growing commitment to working with specific social groups and social transformation exploring the social role of theatre.

The shifting socio-economic and labour conditions of independent artists, and in most European countries, an increase in unstable conditions and mobility.

The perspectives of freedom and autonomy explored by – and so important to – independent theatre as a political statement have likewise evolved in different ways, in different parts of Europe. Initially the word ‘free’ comes about in European theatre history at the end of the nineteenth century in the Théatre Libre in Paris, which was founded in 1887 by André Antoine: “The wish to be free or independent was at this time a declaration of war” (2017: 26). Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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This was both owing to political circumstances as well as economic limitations due to the focus on economic success of commercial theatres which were run by private businessmen, fully opposed to innovation. However, the post war 1960s saw a broader concept of freedom emerge, reaching beyond aesthetic perception and positioned firmly at the centre of independent theatre artists’ ideologies. An important point of distinction is the public perception of theatre as an institution in Socialist countries versus. Central Western European countries, which was radically different (2017: 38). This would lead to the prevailing term of non-institutionalised theatre that still exists in postsocialist countries today, even after its adaptation to the Western economic system and the restructuring of cultural and daily life: From the perspective of those working in this realm, the independent theatre’s claim to freedom may indeed be primarily a claim to artistic freedom, a personally motivated claim, as well as a socially critical and often political claim. Thus, the impulses which move the independents are also quite diverse. For young people, work in the independent scene is a way of life, although not necessarily one which will be pursued for an entire lifetime. It is a decision in favour of collective working, largely free of hierarchies, together with like- minded persons, usually in a group which is homogeneous with regard to age structure and which shares the same political and artistic perceptions and mind-set. This may be considered the rule, and it is also true for groups whose members are of different cultural and ethnic origin [….] This may well be one reason why the relationship between official cultural-political institutions and the independent theatre is still strained (2017: 18).

In certain European countries the political-cultural relationship with independent theatre, as well as the notion of “live arts”, is still characterised by friction and misunderstanding. This is, as a direct result of it challenging the conventional understanding of theatre and the stage, not upholding traditional artistic standards, as well as denying a politically and ideologically “neutral” concept of culture. This is in stark contrast to other European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, where independent theatre has recently been discussed as more economically viable to support, due to their low budget and flexible productions, as a result of political cultural cutbacks and a dedication to reforming theatre systems: Not without good reason, the more flexible production structures of the independent theatre or the free productions are frequently the subject of discussion – as in Germany – when it comes to considering a fundamental reform of the theatre systems, not least for reasons stemming from the pressure of fiscal policy plans. In the Netherlands, independent groups are virtually the sole remaining representatives of public theatre – especially after the massive political-cultural cutbacks by the Dutch Parliament in 2011[…] In that, the independent theatre today hardly differs from the “permanent stages” (2017: 18).

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It is in these countries that independent theatre has received more consistent support and been able to grow, while remaining committed to experimentation and the discovery of new theatre forms. According to Wolfgang Schneider, who has examined the cultural policy for the independent theatre across a diverse range of European countries with the help of artists working in the independent sector, cultural policy makers and theoreticians, we must collectively work to adopt a new policy for theatre throughout Europe (2017: 41). It is therefore important to highlight that contemporary independent theatre in Europe is a phenomenon sustained by the collective, shared and individual cultivation and development of an ethics-aesthetics. That is, constantly evolving attitudes, value systems, (social-environmental) engagements and dispositions – ethically and aesthetically – which remains in dialogue with the shifting world system and reality. The ethics-aesthetics of an artist, company or collective – also what we might refer to as one’s artistic mission or vision – are what determines the choices made in terms of production cycles, artistic process, content, form and audience development. One’s political, aesthetic and ethical values determine the business plan and criteria for artistic excellence. In short, the parameters and criteria to evaluate a work change depending on the values that drives them - and also how these are promoted by a company, artist or collective. For example, is one’s focus on educational, artistic, entertainment, profit making, social engaging, self-promotional, networking, or multi-directional aspects? It is important to develop clarity with one’s ethical-aesthetic mission by prioritising, articulating it, sharing it with others, and receiving feedback from a diversity of sources in order to rework it. It also means moving away from a universalised and generalised approach, towards a refined, singular sense of consistency with one’s proposal both for artistic projects as well as within one’s artistic trajectory. This is done by way of clarifying one’s personal and group priorities, in the sometimes complex constellation of labour, life and art. This includes developing one’s personal leadership, and recognising, mapping and engaging with the full potential of one’s resources, expertise, limitations, and extensive network. This allows one to take further advantage of their passion, creativity, productivity and longevity in one’s artistic trajectory. This also means designing a short, mid and long term plan that is constantly being renegotiated and re-evaluated, based on the realities of one’s circumstances and passions. There is no one recipe for a business model and artistic criteria. Rather, there are different directions to be taken. In order to be coherent with one’s values and mission, one must study and Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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map the possible pathways that correlate. This extends to the terminology one uses to describe one’s work and their field. The reflection on ethics aesthetics is likewise directly related to the glossary that we are currently formulating. We are working to map and build a common, wide-ranging language in the field of contemporary theatre. How we relate to vocabulary, and how we select, understand and define certain terminology is a choice, determined by socio-political, economic and different cultural circumstances and affinities. To this end, the glossary on which we are now working will indicate how the same thing can be named in different ways, or how the same name can have different meanings in different contexts, from different perspectives. “Visibilising” the power of language means taking into account the ideology and political choices, and the choice and use of certain terminology. As quoted by Roland Barthes, “Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire” (Barthes 1978: 73). Our choices of words are not, and cannot be, random – which is why we are constructing and refining a comprehensive glossary for use in the field of contemporary independent theatre. For example, choosing the words “experience” and “participation”, and thinking critically in regards to the terms “entertainment” and “consumption”, is an ethicalaesthetic choice that we are acknowledging as researchers and practical theoreticians. This also means, to take into account terminology that is country and culture specific, such as the term “non-institutionalised theatre”. As an independent theatre maker or collective, whether this happens intuitively or more systematically there is a process of identifying, questioning, transgressing and “destabilising” what we understand and perceive as dominant or even repressive models and systems of order within the arts. In other words, the terminology used reflects the standards of measures and power relations within the field of theatre. This goes hand in hand with the desire to generate and activate new paradigms and value systems, new possibilities for communication and being and creating together new working and living conditions. It also incorporates the desire to generate an innovative incubating environment for capacity building, sharing knowledge and practices as independent theatre practitioners and theoreticians. All this must be sustained and accompanied by the development of collective critical Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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thinking as practical theoreticians and theoretical practitioners. It departs from acknowledging a shared work-life-art condition, in its diversity of manifestations depending on each artist’s varying history, background, perspective, culture and work and living conditions. Thus, it is paramount to configure an ethics-aesthetics that transcends clear frontiers between art and life. Mikhail Bakhtin, in the book Toward a Philosophy of the Act, provides us with a very relevant discourse on answerability in relation to the human being’s approach to his artistic and theoretical practice (Bakhtin 1990). Bakhtin proposes that we must cultivate an answerable unity of thinking and performing action – that is, actions that engage multiple territories (subjective, relational and ecological). He introduces concepts such as “action-performing thinking” and “participative (un-indifferent) thinking”, developed in his philosophy of the answerable act or “deed”. In the participatory presence of others – in the artistic incubator or laboratory - we are more likely to engage in taking responsibility for our thoughts and actions. He argues that the human being has no right to a “non alibi in being”, that is, to an evasion of the unique answerability which is constituted by the never repeatable, place of Being, what he refers to as the once-occurring answerable act which one’s whole life must constitute. In what ways can we respond to constructing a unity, a fusion and penetration, between life and art practice, actualised in the self? We, “must become answerable through and through […] I have to answer with my own life for what I have experienced and understood as art” (1990: 1-2). How can we filter through this to articulate it in our vision and artistic mission? This means that the constitution and verbalisation of our ethical aesthetic vertebrae is continuous, always in progress, and in a continual state of relation to others. Therefore to exist on the borders and fringes of multiple disciplines of the arts, outside the norms of established institutionalised theatre, requires the independent artist to commit to emerging aesthetic-ethical alliances and networks for the purposes of survival and sustainability. As multi-taskers and multi-professionals, independent theatre artists learn to promote both themselves as well as their artistic collaborators, colleagues and allies. As part of the process of collaboration within contemporary independent theatre arts, in all phases of the production process – from the artistic idea to its staging, performance and promotion – there is a tendency towards sharing tasks, responsibilities, and moving between roles and functions. Such multitasking and endless responsibilities can be regarded as a handicap, in terms of time management. Yet, if the work is divided and shared in an intelligent and rotative manner, this provides Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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the collective or group of artists (regardless of their legal status) with political freedom and independence from the criteria and parameters that government and private institutions might impose.

2. Parameters of artistic excellence The discussion around artistic excellence can offer tools and encourage the development of instruments for a co-creative environment, instead of proposing “measures of excellency”. This is in order for artists to feel comfortable contributing their own abilities and experiences, while being offered strategies for co-creation, and being challenged to articulate their experiences, discourses and ethics. Parameters of artistic excellence are interrelated with one’s vision. The capacity to selfevaluate and co-evaluate peers and artists that are working in the surrounding context is central in constructing a collective and mobile discourse around artistic excellence, while recognizing its subjective branching and rooting. The intention and challenge is to elaborate a critical discussion around the existing and evolving parameters of artistic excellence in the field of contemporary independent and noninstitutionalised theatre practices. It is imperative that these move beyond the criteria dictated by large cultural institutions and conventional notions of officially established theatre. The parameters of artistic excellence defined by large cultural institutions vary from country to country, and region to region, interlaced with a “performance measurement” framework in the performing arts sector, arts management, and the creative industries, traditionally focused on economic and social measures. More recently, the intention has been to expand towards further non-financial indicators, as a result of practitioners and academics insisting on questioning the relevance of this evaluation system and offering alternatives (Labaronne 2017). Likewise, it has to do with a diversity of subjective aesthetic, ethical, political and cultural preferences and dispositions of those in positions of power (curators, programmers, directors, ministers of culture, funders etc.) within the large cultural and artistic institutions and industries. These institutions typically communicate their understandings and definitions of artistic excellence in a more generic – as well as a sometimes nationally focused – way.

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For example, the notion of artistic excellence is defined on the website of the Arts Council England as follows: “[…] deliver[ing] artistic work and cultural experiences that represent the height of ambition, talent and skill. We want to demonstrate England’s status as a world centre for cultural excellence, as well as helping artists to export their work internationally to showcase the best of our country abroad”. For the purpose of elaborating a critical and alternative discussion, we return to the elements introduced in the theoretical-historical framework and definition of independent and non-institutionalised movement based contemporary theatre within this report – and in dialogue with the pluralities of structural and aesthetic approaches to contemporary movement based independent theatre across Europe. Simon Murray and John Keefe, authors of the book Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, provide us with a useful set of initial parameters for looking at the relationship between the physical-visual, scenographic, vocal-aural sign systems which make up the mise en scène of contemporary theatre. This “three point relationship” and “three qualities required for success” are suggested as being: 1.

Fantasia: surprise, unpredictability, imagination, flair.

Furbizia: cunning, slyness, bending the rules, trickery, gamesmanship.

Tecnica: technique, highly developed core skills.

We could apply this system of criteria in looking at, discussing and reflecting on the artistic quality of a piece of theatrical work and process.

3. Staging and a shift towards participation: collaboration and sharing knowledge Moving to look at things from the perspective of Hans-Thies Lehmann, we might want to consider Postdramatic Theatre as referring to : […] theatre after drama. Despite their diversity, the new forms and aesthetics that have evolved have one essential quality in common: they no longer focus on the dramatic text [...] a new theatre landscape [...] Approaches that have preferred to call these new theatre forms ‘postmodern’ or more neutrally “contemporary experimental” or “contemporary alternative” (Lehmann, 2006, p. 2).

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Lehmann specifically considers these developments in the landscape of new theatre forms and aesthetics to be: 1.

An inventive response to the emergence of new technologies;

A historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and soun;

A development in the relationships between aspects of text, space, time, body, media;

Creation of performance text;

A turn to performance – in other words, a turn towards the audience.

Contemporary independent theatre’s condition as a zone of synergies, hybrids and pluralities of knowledge, forms and aesthetics feeds off – and nurtures – the other arts – moving and moved by their experimental, porous and innovative qualities and potentials. Likewise, there is an engagement and dialogue with the social (as well as more recently the hard) sciences, with the growing tendencies in artistic research and experimentation in the performing arts. This is both with the objectives of inventing new languages, alternative dramaturgical methods and processes, as well as continuing to question and propose forms of understanding the mediums of theatre, performance, dance, as well as live, media and visual arts. The performances and products created through research, and process based practices, as well as those devised collaboratively, must be approached with different criteria of artistic excellence. Moreover, there has been a growing tendency towards participatory practices in the arts, including movement based contemporary theatre. This has been a recurrent theme in specific periods of the 20th century, witnessed in the form of a growing shift towards participation. This is a theme that is explored by, and from, a historical and critical perspective by Claire Bishop in her book Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012). Within the context of movement based contemporary theatre as well as the other arts disciplines, the artist questions his social function and his multiplicity of possible roles – such as proposer, transgressor, host, facilitator, co-creator, performer, engager, etc. – in the process of what has been expanded to refer to as “world-making”, “relation-scape building” and “environmental art” from different practice-theory perspectives within the contemporary performance, dance, theatre, and cultural theory and practices.

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These issues are all useful and relevant when thinking about, writing, questioning, generating dialogue, and elaborating on a critical and alternative discussion around the evolving and multi-perspective criteria of artistic excellence within movement based independent theatre. It is part of a growing engagement of experimental artistic languages in collaborative, social and collective practices in the contemporary art world. These tendencies resonate with the amplification of the notions of co-authorship and spectatorship towards the agency of a new protagonist-participant. They also provoke epistemic changes in the formats of creation – which are no longer based on products, but on collective processes. This research and process based quality responds to a need arising from contemporary society to displace the centrality of the artistic field, and move towards new ways of activating other modes of being and creating together. Also toward other possibilities of social interlocutions. This change is aligned with the emergence of new ethical aesthetic paradigms active in a hybrid zone between symptoms and intuitions. This is a zone where artists are confronted by, and engage in, collective practices, with an intention to reconfigure the relationship between practice and theory in their contemporary reality. It is crucial to remember that the field of contemporary independent theatre “can only be adequately understood in the context of the entirety of theatre-cultural structures and traditions of the individual countries” (Brauneck 2017: 14). Each country – and, furthermore, each region and locality – has its own circumstances, structures, traditions and definitions which all affect the way theatre is understood, evaluated, experienced and analysed. Within an increasingly globalised context, it is important to give attention and recognition to local perspectives. This means interweaving them with the global and international theatre and performing arts movement. In this way we will generate a more coherent, multi-perspective and sustainable dialogue that recognises the particularities and pluralities of diverse perspectives, practices and experiences. To achieve this requires developing a healthy habit of self and group evaluation and, therefore, adopting a constructively critical and active stance in order to avoid: 1.

Entering a state of stagnation and victimisation in response to working and living conditions that one is confronted with within the sector of Independent theatre.

Naively and simplistically importing models of organisation and excellence from other countries, institutions or theatre companies without mapping the unique Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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circumstances and resources under, and within which, one works and to which one might have access. 3.

Getting pulled into, distracted and influenced by fears, insecurities, trends and fashionable language that takes one’s attention away from what is most ethicallyaesthetically important to one’s work and mission.

What is important to focus on is a passionate, collaborative and consequential position regarding themes such as: 1.

Being coherent and self-critical, with the language, vocabulary, and terminology one uses in describing one’s creative process, conceptual framework, lineage, sources, resources and references. This includes the way one understands relationships and partnerships with – and dependency on – government and non-government institutions.

Generating strategies for gathering, recycling, sharing, reinventing and adapting the tools, working methods and central principles that serve us in the rapidly changing times (in terms of the full cycle of creative, production, promotion process).

Developing ways of sharing and questioning one’s strategies, methods and materials with others locally, regionally nationally and internationally.

Mapping and tracing pathways, resources, contacts and networks can help navigate us through an unknown future – in dialogue with a complex present – made up of established and alternative economic, artistic, cultural and social models and modes of working and creating.

4. The physical in theatre In response to what has been spoken and written about one officially established theatre art, we are interested in the pluralities of movement based theatres that have existed, been developed and named in a search for articulating, affirming and recognising their evolving methods, principles and practices. Amongst others, these include names such as “third theatre”, “holy theatre”, “total theatre”, “theatre of cruelty” and “poor theatre”.

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Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction by John Keefe and Simon Murray is, as indicated earlier in this work, an important reference for mapping the pluralities and diversities of movement based theatre practices, both in historic and contemporary times. That is, what we refer to as ‘physical theatres’ and ‘the physical’ in theatre. According to Keefe and Murray the “One Theatre” – which has taken on a powerful authority and influence – has dominated by way of its culturally, politically awarded status, as well as its promotion and presence in published and preserved texts. In this book, part of their approach is to speak about a diversity of forms, practices, styles and languages of movement based theatres. That is, to map and promote the emergence of a plurality of theatre practicetheory-history. It is in an attempt to reach beyond a dominant or hegemonic set of theatre conventions in synchronicity and affinity with this research, the authors bring to the table the key terms – “physical theatre”, “total theatre”, etc. – as dialectical frames or lenses through which we can look at and understand particular practices and ideas. The notion of “performance text” or “production text” are also useful terms that Murray and Keefe introduce in their book as important theatre vocabulary for discussion and investigation: Our grounding premise: that ‘physical theatre’ as a term, idea or concept captures the aims of certain movements in the 19th and 20th centuries to confront the continuing hegemony of a theatre defined by its literary and verbal dimensions […] such theatre must be contextualised within the historical and ongoing practices we call the ‘physical in theatres’ which are found in all theatres as centered on the (moving-speaking) body. These practices are mimetic in manifestation, playing to the empathetic and cognitive receptivity of the spectator gathered as audience; what Susan Bennett calls ‘interpretive communities’. ‘Physical theatre’ then traces its origins in our contemporary sense to those ideologies and manifestos which sought to reverse a dualism and hierarchy of word over body. As such, ‘physical theatre’ is a construction of forms, beliefs and dispositions which takes its place alongside other and continuing suspicions of the Word as the embodiment of Enlightenment reason (Murray; Keefe 2007: 6).

Throughout the book, the authors map, trace and traverse this ambiguous and amorphous field, offering case studies as well as analysis and reflection on its traces from the past as well as its influences on contemporary performing arts practices. Murray and Keefe point out their subjective, but also critical, position in relation to the terminology of physical theatre. Both began their theatre careers at a point when this terminology

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was being articulated and spread throughout Europe during the 1980s. Yet they inquire into whether the cultural moment of physical theatre has moved on, and highlight: Whether the term can continue to describe and encapsulate renewal and innovation in theatre and performance is open to question…What the “it” of physical theatre is, and whether the “it” has substance beyond shadow and phantom, disguising (by renaming) otherwise unremarkable performance events we will investigate (2007: 2-3).

This is regardless of the fact that there is still a reasonable amount of physical theatre being generated, performed and experienced throughout the Western world. Paradoxically, it is also strongly ingrained in the language of educationalists, actor trainers and their students in European, North American and Australian theatre landscapes. Their modules, courses and perspectives on “physical theatre” proliferate in training education programmes. Although written in 2007, these two books continue to be an important and relevant reference for movement based practitioners, theoreticians and artists. In short, the books offer one of the first comprehensive overviews of non-text-based theatre, ranging from traditional mime to performance and experimental dance. Murray and Keefe insist that “physical theatres” and “the physical” in theatre continues to be present both in the language of performance, as well as in a variety of diverse contemporary theatre practices, permeated by a shifting social, philosophical, political and ideological context.

5. Staging in relation to text and drama Another important theatre researcher and scholar, and a key reference for international discussions in the field of contemporary theatre, is the aforementioned Hans-Thies Lehmann. He has developed what is considered to be a ground breaking study on new theatre forms, including movement based theatre, that have developed since the late 1960s. In his internationally renowned book, Post-dramatic Theatre (2006), Lehmann discusses a diversity of new forms and aesthetics that all share the common denominator of no longer focusing on dramatic text. Departing from the perspective of Lehmann, it is possible to say that,

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Post-dramatic Theatre refers to theatre after drama. Despite their diversity, the new forms and aesthetics that have evolved have one essential quality in common: they no longer focus on the dramatic text [...] a new theatre landscape [...] Approaches that have preferred to call these new theatre forms “postmodern” or more neutrally “contemporary experimental” or “contemporary alternative” (Lehmann 2006: 2).

He considers in the specific these developments in the landscape of new theatre forms and aesthetics to be: 1.

An inventive response to the emergence of new technologies.

A historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound; a development in the relationships between aspects of text, space, time, body, and media.

The creation of performance text; a turn to performance – otherwise known as a turn towards the audience.

His research is highly relevant to our investigation on movement based independent contemporary theatre, in that we are likewise referring to a phenomenon of theatre beyond dramatic text, “after drama”.

6. Trans-disciplinarity and spectatorship

One of the central demands for artists and collectives working in independent theatre is to amplify one’s fields of dialogue, action, collaboration and contagion both in artistic exchanges as well as in building relationship with institutions, curators and scholars of partnering artistic fields, and the seemingly more distant arts, sciences and business areas. These are strategies to both expand one’s knowledge and tools to renew and amplify one’s creative approaches, as well as to step outside of one’s field and perspective of mastery and experiment with alternative visions of composition spectatorship, authorship and collective process, as well as to expand and reach out to new publics. As highlighted by Lehmann, the developments in new forms of theatre practices have been interconnected with the discussions and transformations and that have occurred in visual, performance and live art throughout the last century.

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Claire Bishop, in her text Participation (2006), reflects on, inquiries into and enters in dialogue with invited contributors from the arts and philosophy. She emphasises that the dialogues and latest artistic innovations throughout a diversity of fields, artistic practices and theoretical and philosophical discussions have been evolving around the shared theme and interest of participation. Bishop points out that there is still a gap where important work needs to be done to connect the history and present experiences of participation in the visual arts with that of the history of participation in theatre, architecture and pedagogy, as well as art history and anthropology (15). Moreover, a major conflict which continues to circulate within theatre studies and creation in relationship to spectatorship, is between showing and watching, actors and audience. It is still rare to find perspectives and work which both take into account production and reception, according to Steven De Beider. De Beiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research is focused on the way the body is embodied and perceived scenically. But it also looks at how the perception of the spectator â&#x20AC;&#x201C; also connected with corporeality â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is typically ignored.

7. Ethics and aesthetics Lastly, an important parameter that we would like to discuss in relation to artistic excellence, is the capacity to elaborate, explore and stage critical questions, experiences and discourses. In short, to adopt an ethic-aesthetic position in response to the greater theatre industry as well as in dialogue with contemporary local and global reality. The focus here is the growing innovative and critical capacity of independent artists to ethically and aesthetically situate and orient themselves in response to the social, political, economic, cultural, ecological, local and global realities. This is fundamentally owing to the interdependence that has arisen between the contemporary theatre and dance practices and critical performance and cultural studies. Therefore, we are not talking about the judgement of which position has been taken, but rather the capacity to engage in critical thinking and doing, by way of staged, dramaturgical, experimental and conceptual choices.

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Contemporary theatre has been greatly influenced by the developments in performance practice and performance studies. The ontology of theatre is therefore configured and reconfigures itself, locates and dislocates itself, as it enters in dialogue – and, at times, collides – with the ontology of performance as well as other performing and visual art forms. Much of the focus and intentions of performance and live art, arising from both visual and performing arts communities and their hybridisation. At its height during the 1960s and 1970s, this hybridisation results from the attempt to reconsider and dissolve the durable ‘immortal’ materiality of the art object. Instead, another kind of ephemeral and immanent materiality of performance has been generated. This version has other forms of resonances and residues, recycled and rematerialised through different logics (ontological and epistemological). Peggy Phelan – a popular performance studies theorist, amongst other thinkers, practitioners and artists – was radically interested in finding ways to resist the ‘relentless acquisitive drive of capitalism’ and the production of alienated “capitalist subjectivities”. Phelan insisted that: Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations. Once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology (1993: 146).

Performances focuses on activating inter-subjective experience, varying from the most simple to the more complex expressive structures and environments. In its ephemeral, disappearing, inter-subjective essence, Phelan describes this as a “radical critique of commodity culture” with the potential to radically disturb the neo-liberal capitalist model, while simultaneously infiltrating and dialoguing with this system. Phelan likewise reinforces the importance to localise and contextualise performance, due to its cultural specificity and variations from community to community in terms of enactment and reception. Performance is a live art practice of the here and now (hic et nunc), a system of learning and transmitting embodied knowledge and memory. As contemporary theatre practitioners, regardless of shared or diverging positions, one’s relationship with this legacy needs to be acknowledged. Therefore, the capacity to generate discussions and engage in dialogue on the complexity of the sector of independent theatre is essential. There has to be a recognition of the conflicts,

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contradictions and paradoxes that surround the pluralities of independent contemporary theatre practices today. Moreover, although the focus of the contemporary theatre practices we are looking at are in Europe, it is relevant to point out that these new forms of theatre takes place within, and are influenced by, the socio-economic and political context of Integrated World Capitalism (IWC), examined by the philosopher and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari. Guattari critically defines this state of post-industrial capitalism as the global politicaleconomic terrain characterised by intense techno-scientific transformations, that tends to decentralise its sites of power, works through the capitalisation of subjective power, functioning through the production of signs, syntax, and subjectivity, via control over the media, advertising and option polls, etc. This is the context within which independent artists and collectives are working and by which they are conditioned today. In response, Guattari proposes that artists and activists develop new ethical aesthetic paradigm that generate dissensus through practice. (Guattari 2000: 47). Along with other political philosopher, theorists and activists, many come from the Autonomist tradition. This was an Italian Marxist movement which emerged in 1960s and involved Antonio Negri, Paulo Virno, Franco Bifo Berardi, Giuseppe Cocco and Michael Hardt). In parallel with the Situationists, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze map some of the symptoms and conditions that characterise and infiltrate the current dominant existential territories (part of a global system that Guattari describes as ‘WIC’) in which we are working and living, and by which we are conditioned. The process focuses on what territories and relations of power are we resisting, destabilising, reproducing, and ignoring through our work – and why? In the already mentioned Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe, Brauneck focuses on a Europe going through change as a result of the creation of the European Union, which has affected: “international production, networking, digitalisation, project-based work and hybridisation of forms, as well as leading to the economisation of more and more areas of life and the commercialisation of the public sphere” (Brauneck 2017: 5). In response, in dialogue and in dissensus, the independent contemporary theatre movement, through different tactics,

such as what Lehmann refers to as a “Politics of

Perception”, generate experiences and “ecological praxis” which runs “counter to the normal order of things”. This resonates with the definition of aesthesis, as described by Claire Bishop in Daria Lavrennikov Mapping definitions of independent and non-institutionalised theatres

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her book Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship: “an autonomous regime of experience that is not reducible to logic, reason or morality” (2012: 18). Therefore, the structure of the experience proposed generates a singular interchanging environment in which conventionally perceived divisions between the intellectual, the sensory, the emotional, the ideational, the imaginative and the practical are overruled and blurred. This means that conventional regimes of logic and reason becoming stretched and destabilised. Configuring new maps of existence and action for the independent theatre sector means working on developing a new ethical aesthetic paradigms, restructuring movement across three dimensions of ecological praxis. These three ecological registers are: 1.

The environment;

Social relations;

Human subjectivity.

This categorisation does not set out to separate the registers into three dimensions but rather to emphasise how they are interdependent, and at times differentiated through practice (Guattari 2000). In light of these paradoxes, there is a responsibility – plus a huge potential – in new theatre practices that self-define themselves as independent theatre, to build awareness and sustainability in the interdisciplinary collaborations and networks of which they are part. To this end, it is necessary to engage the “general intellect”, a commitment to practicing and researching other modes and forms of being, thinking and creating together, through dialogue, interrogation and exchange in the format of the artistic incubator. Paolo Virno, an Italian philosopher, semiologist and a figurehead of the Italian Marxist movement, considers the “commune”, or general, is not something that is encountered in someone, but something which occurs and passes between us in constant flux. In our practices of exploring new forms and methods of communication, theatre and artistic creation, we are brought to explore a diversity of existing and invented languages – both verbal and non-verbal – in the constant recognition and reactivation of its ‘general’ quality, through particular and singular propositions.

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The difficulties that emerge comes with the following tendencies on the part of artists/collectives: 1.

Coming to a laboratory environment with a predestined goal and priority of selfbenefit and an attitude of protectionism and privatisation of their tools, practice and language;

Becoming disillusioned by collaboration;

Looking to create a universal language that is profitable.

For Virno, language serves as a model for the general that only exists in relation between individuals, and cannot exist in the absence of this relationship. This exploration and play with languages (verbal and non-verbal), brings us to experience and observe its mobile, mysterious and powerful nature, beyond a static immobile quality, as both a source of communicating and transmitting, as well as transforming and transcending its function and norms. Virno adds: Now I think that in modernity, the general in both art and philosophy is involved in a complex emancipatory struggle to get away from the universal. This is also how I interpret “other globalisation” or “new global” movements: they represent the dimension of the general that criticizes the universal...What aesthetic and political experiences can we develop to transfer from the universal to the general without consequently destroying the particular? Or take what philosophers call the ‘individuation principle’, meaning the valuation of everything that is unique and unrepeatable in our lives. Speaking of individuation implies that you consider the individual a result, not a starting point. The individual is a result of a movement that is rooted in the ‘communal’ and yet is, or is becoming, particular (Virno in Lavaert-Gielen 2009: 19).

Here Virno considers the general as something pre-individual, a general consciousness, a “we”, a general pre-individual that exists before the individuation develops, rather than the sum of all, and is opposed to the concept of the universal. Universalisation, on the other hand, is a process he describes as mobilised by the state and its post-Fordist machinery. Therefore, what all of us in the theatre and cultural sector must be cautious of, is the tendency of general intellect to be turned into a source of financial gain – and of social collaboration and virtuosity to be turned into patterns and structures of post-Fordist production. So – given we have movement-based theatre practice – in the context of the artistic

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incubator, how is it that we can generate environments that will produce other modes of knowledge and forms of alliances that are difficult to universalise? Virno argues that the key is “formal investigation”. This responds to the “crisis of the standard of measure” and generates new ways of living and feeling. This, in turn, results in new standards and criteria, against which to measure cognitive and affective experience and touching upon social and political reality. Virno concludes that this is where aesthetic and social resistance meet - and also what brings the artistic avant garde close to the radical social movement. In short, this point represents the common ground where a new society is anticipated, now identifying social prosperity with ‘general intellect’ rather than labour time, within the domains of language, intelligence and collaboration referencing.

Bibliography BAKHTIN, Mikhail (1993), Toward a Philosophy of the Act, Trans. Vladim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press. BARTHES, Roland (1978), A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, New York: Hill and Wang. BISHOP, Claire (2006), Participation, Cambridge: MIT Press. BISHOP, Claire (2012), Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso. BRAUNECK, Manfred (2017), Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe: Structures, Aesthetics, Cultural Policy, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. GUATTARI, Félix (1989), The Three Ecologies, London: The Athlone Press. LABARONNE, Leticia (2017), “Performance Measurement and Evaluation in Arts Management”, Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy/Zeitschrift für Kulturmanagement, Vol. 3 Issue 1, pp. 37-70. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14361/zkmm-2017-0103 LAVAERT, Sonja, GIELEN, Pascal (2009), “The Dismeasure of Art. An Interview with Paolo Virno”, in Pascal Gielen and Paul de Bruyne (eds.), Arts in Society, Being an Artist in Post-Fordist Times, Rotterdam: NAi Publisher, pp. 17-44. LEHMANN, Hans Thies (2006), Postdramatic Theater, translated b. Karen Jurs-Munby, LondonNew York: Routledge. MURRAY, Simon, KEEFE, John (2007), Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, London-New York: Routledge. PHELAN, Peggy (1993), Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London-New York: Routledge.

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A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona /Liverpool John Moores University Abstract: This research moves from the perspective of the sociological paradigm as theorised by Domenico De Masi in relation to industrial and post-indutrial society, and from the seminal work by Pierre Bordieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, that defines the cultural production or product – including theatre – as belonging to the so-called market of symbolic goods. Moving from De Masi and Bordieu, the investigation aims at applying and adapting concepts from “tourism marketing and management” to theatre. In this perspective, I am analysing forms of cultural products – theatre and performing arts – and the passage from most traditional forms of consumptions, based on simply attendance to theatre to ones based on the experience. Borrowing the expression Site & Monument approach from the cultural and tourisms economics, it is possible to notice a swop from a Theatre Product Consumption approach to an Experience-based one that provides forms of experiential consumption. Keywords: Site & Monument approach, theatre product consumption, experience, “E”s, experiential marketing, systemic goods, audience profile and development, Realms of the experience. *****

1. A preliminary consideration: a paradigm for theatre Italian sociologist Domenico De Masi developed the so-called paradigm that, in our opinion, can be easily applied to the development of a business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre (cf. De Masi 2000, 2007 and 2013). De Masi developed his own paradigm, inspired by the thinking of masters such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Frederick Taylor, Daniel Bell, André Gorz, Alain Touraine and

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Agnes Heller. Thus he created original material based on research and which focused, above everything else, on the world of work. The essential elements of this paradigm are: 1.

Post-industrial society and its socio-economic aspects;

Emerging needs;

New social subjects;

Creativity;

Work;

Teleworking;

Creative idleness;

Leisure time;

Social and business paradoxes.

For the purposes of this work, we will consider only the useful elements in our discussion on independent theatre. Specifically in relation to â&#x20AC;&#x153;emerging needsâ&#x20AC;?, within the context of industrial society, there were gradually established trends related to: 1.

Rationalisation;

Efficiency;

Specialisation;

Synchronisation;

Productivity;

Economy of scale;

Hierarchical structure in organisations, urbanism and consumerism.

However, in post-industrial society, values emerge such as intellectualisation, creativity, ethics, aesthetics, subjectivity, emotionality, androgyny, the deconstruction of time and space, virtuality and the quality of life. In this context, according to the quantitative needs of power, money and success, others are comprised of a more qualitative nature, connected to introspection, solidarity, friendship, love, play, beauty and conviviality. Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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De Masi defines creativity as a “synthesis of fantasy” (with which new ideas are elaborated) and of concreteness (with which new ideas are translated into reality). He defines a creative person as having a strong imagination and – at the same time – a strong concreteness. Moreover, that – being rare individuals – their role can be played by creative groups with very fanciful personalities (even if not very concrete) and by very concrete personalities (even if not very imaginative). In order for the concrete and the imaginative to collaborate creatively, it is necessary for them to share the same mission, stay motivated to reach it and that they are guided by a charismatic leader capable of impressing the group. In the industrial factory, the work – mainly manual – absorbed all the physical energies of the worker, was subjected to strict controls by the leaders and was clearly separated from free time. In the post-industrial society, two-thirds of workers carry out activities of an intellectual, often creative kind. In many of these activities, the quantity and quality of the product do not depend on the control exercised on the worker – but more on its motivation and ability to operate in that happy condition that De Masi provocatively calls “creative idleness”. This “creative idleness” is not a matter of laziness or disengagement, more a state of grace. It is common to many intellectual activities determined when the fundamental dimensions of our active life – work to produce wealth, study to produce knowledge, play to produce wellbeing – hybridise and get confused allowing both the act and the creative product.

2. General considerations on cultural consumption As stated by Pierre Bordieu in The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (1984), the cultural production or product, including theatre, belongs to the so-called market of symbolic goods. Bordieu points out: Symbolic goods are a two-faced reality, a commodity and a symbolic object. Their specifically cultural value and their commercial value remain relatively independent, although the economic sanction may come to reinforce their cultural consecration (1984: 3).

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As a matter of fact, the extent to which consumption of symbolic goods depends upon the educational level of consumers, markedly varies from one sector to the other. Whatever properties are assigned to a cultural good, they cannot be assimilated to intrinsic characteristics. In theatre, one case study might be the experience of Swiss director Milo Rau, who – during his academic career studying sociology, languages and literature – was a pupil of Bordieu as well as of Tzvetan Todorov. In particular, Rau applies the concept of symbolic good to theatre practice, working on the genius loci – an economic and sociological expression taken from De Masi. He creates site-specific work that plays on the relation reality-fictiontransformation, in altering the traditional mechanisms of identification and representation. To focus again on the main topic of cultural consumption, including theatre and performing arts, we re-seeing this a widespread phenomenon increasingly shifting towards a dimension of identity exploration. This renders its meaning not only significant at an individual level, but brings in new elements such as the need of individuals to integrate and identify themselves in groups within which it is possible to share their vocation. The fascination generated by the less exploited places of culture – such as alternative theatre spaces or site-specific venues – made up of the so-called “minor” centres that respond well to the need for short journeys, and to the search for the quality of life that characterises today’s cultural customer, has contributed to these phenomena. This is certainly a significant aspect since, for short periods of time, the value of a cultural product as perceived by the cultural customer, is closely related to the overall intensity of the experience. As such, thanks to the range and quality of the opportunities offered in such a short time span, the experience is able to offer increased emotional and cultural awareness. As for the types of cultural attractions involved, we are not just talking here about theatre and performing arts – but also historical sites and archaeological finds accessed via museums, art galleries, cinemas, theatre, music and literature. Therefore, typically there is an urban context linked to the complex of the attractions of a specific environment, from the monumental, architectural or museum to the performing arts. The progressive extension and diffusion of cultural offerings has shaped competitive advantages in many areas. However, there have also been negative impacts, essentially owing to the phenomenon of cultural homogenisation. This is because many environments have developed artificial attractions that are not representative of their culture and identity. Alternatively they have not been able to make the customers discover and/or experience another Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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culture. The result is a heated competition, leading to a downwards spiral, driven by cost and price reduction, rather than quality. This has led to the emergence of new forms of cultural offerings – including both the theatre and performing arts – and the identification of increasingly specific demand profiles. In recent years there has been a general evolution from the most traditional forms of experiences, based on simple attendance at a theatre or, alternatively, visits to museums and monuments or to more dynamic venues. Borrowing the expression Site & Monument approach from the culture, tourism and economic fields, it can be said that – in the sphere of in theatre and performing arts – these changes accompany the transition from a theatre-product consumption approach to an experience-based one. Here the latter provides forms of experiential consumption which encourage personal development by audiences. This “experience based approach” can be clarified using three different examples: 1.

The previously mentioned case of Milo Rau who uses site-specific theatre as a way to act on reality, in order to reconstruct and transform it (also in a meta-theatrical way).

Teatro de los Sentidos, which considers theatre as a sensorial experience.

Punchdrunk, that transforms the site-specific in a very particular kind of immersive theatre, delivering an individual and unique journey for the active and dynamic spectator.

All these points will be considered in detail in the next section.

3. Non-institutionalised and independent theatre: an experiential economical approach The combination of theatre practice and experience is not new in studies looking at both theatre and economical phenomena. In fact, many scholars use the term “experiences” to describe the process of using cultural services or the concept of cultural product from the consumer’s perspective. A clear example of the relationship between performing arts and experience – using the meaning as applied by economists – and seen from the artistic perspective, is the experience of Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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the “happening”, as Allan Kaprow describes it. Alternatively the concept is seen in Augusto Boal’s theatre practice and – with specific regard to theory of economics – in flash mobs. These are all very different types of performance practice. However, they all share a common element in that the experience is more significant than the product. Cases where the product is more central in terms of value include Cirque du Soleil, Punchdrunk or La Fura dels Baus. In all of these, the role of the experience is the predominant factor in terms of the impact of the performance. In an interesting study into this phenomenon, Carbone and Haeckel state that “the experience is given by the immediate impression that is formed in consumers when they relate with goods and services, a perception that is formed when human beings consolidate sensory information”. Focusing more in detail on the economy of experience, Pine and Gilmore (1998) – probably the most important scholars in this specific field – claim that the main features of the experience are uniqueness and personalisation/customisation. This applies whenever companies stage an experience that touches customers in a particularly personal and worthy way. From the same perspective, but taking a more philosophical approach, we might refer to the work of Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic. In Benjamin’s eyes, experiences are based on personal experience and provide sensory, emotional, cognitive, behavioural and relational values that replace functional ones. Even the most banal operations can be transformed into memorable experiences for customers. Therefore, the company that decides to enrich its offer in order for it to be perceived as unique, will have to turn into “director of experience” in a theatrical meaning. In other words, the offer in question will need to be able to involve individuals on an emotional, physical, intellectual and even spiritual level. Experiences are indeed prepared, lived, remembered and shared with others. In this context, symbolic and emotional dimensions acquire more and more importance and the concept of experience becomes central in the approach to consumer marketing. Even traditional products can be commercialised by an increased emphasis on their experiential content. One example of this is the car market, where advertising campaigns – rather than focusing on the technical qualities of the components of the engine – promote the driving experience.

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From purely theatrical and historical perspectives, the business role of “director of experience” considered from an emotional, physical, intellectual and even spiritual viewpoint is not so different from the experience and the practice of masters such as Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, Alejandro Jodorowski and in the Metaphor à l’envers of Decroux’s method.

4. Theatre as a systemic product Theatre products must be considered as systemic products. They are composed of numerous heterogeneous elements that must constitute a coherent unit; moreover, they can be fully defined only considering the aspects of production and consumption – process that involves, with roles and modalities that can vary, both the consumers and the producers and the whole of the actors/stakeholders working on the supply side. There are two significant aspects of the theatre product: 1.

The theatre experience emerges from the interaction between a specific individual, a product, a venue, and the actors working on it. From this assumption it can easily be inferred that the level of participation and involvement of the cultural consumer significantly determines the quality of the service. The degree of participation of the individual may vary according to the type of experience sought, but in any case, the necessity of the involvement of the same remains absolute. The global theatre product is, in fact, above anything else, something experienced by the individual, who therefore cannot in any way miss, or make use of, a third party. Furthermore, the consumer/customer must not only be physically present, but must actively participate.

The theatre experience is systemic-dynamic, since it is created thanks to a plurality of goods, services, experiences offered by individual tourism companies, other economic operators, Public Administration offices, the resources present in the environment and interactions with other individuals.

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Following this logic, the subjects that are part of the theatre offer should not be considered independent elements directed and regulated by market forces alone, but interconnected units within a complex relational system. The industry insiders and the scholars in the field of the experience economy consider the personal involvement of the consumer/customer to be the basic element of this new economy. They also strongly affirm that staging experiences not only means entertaining customers, but involving them. The producer of tourist experiences – in order to design, implement and supply this new economic offer – must therefore know how to structure an experience as a whole. In this regard, Pine and Gilmore have schematised the process of involvement of a client/guest using the two most important dimensions of the experience, in the model of “areas of experience”. The first dimension of the areas of experience concerns the level of participation. This is divided into: 1.

Passive participation: in which customers do not act or directly influence performance. Examples are those people attending classical music concerts and who experience the experience simply as listeners. It is possible to assume that conventional institutionalised theatre falls mainly into this area.

Active participation: in which customers personally take part in the performance or event providing the experience, such as the performers and the audience members in the creation of their experience during a site-specific performance.

The second dimension describes the type of connection or the degree of environmental involvement that unites customers with the event or the performance and is characterised by the following: 1.

Absorption: experience “penetrates” the person through the mind - for example, watching television or a film in a theatre auditorium.

Immersion: the person “enters” the experience by taking physically or virtually part of the experience, such as watching a film in the cinema with other viewers, or using virtual reality simulators or other digital devices. Alternatively, they might participate in a site-specific or immersive theatre performance. Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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Bringing these four dimensions together gives rise to the four different realms within which the experience is developed, defining the overall level of customer involvement, These realms are referred to as the four â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eâ&#x20AC;?s: 1.

Entertainment;

Education;

Evasion;

Aesthetic experience.

Source: Pine and Gilmore 1998.

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The four realms are mixed together in different sizes and proportions, depending on the type of experience and the host involved, contributing to the creation of unique, personal and unrepeatable events. The degree of final involvement of the client/guest depends either on the propensity to be involved or not in any given event, or on the organisation that organises it. The richest and most engaging experiences incorporate aspects of all four areas. At this point, it is possible to predict different audience experiences that take account of the following dimensions as an integral part of guests’ experience: 1.

The aesthetic dimension (being there): this is the most important, as it is what makes guests want to take advantage of a certain product.

The dimension of entertainment (entertained): entertainment is one of the key components of recreational offers. It is important not to overlook this in cases where complex and demanding experiences are being staged. Even under these circumstances, we must never forget to create relaxing and leisurely moments, which absorb the guests’ attention and leave them with good memories.

The dimension of evasion/escapism (to try): to manifest this, it is necessary to ask oneself what the guests are interested in trying and experimenting,taking account of all the elements that allow people to escape from their routine reality. The aim here is to be able to involve consumers/customers more deeply in the experience via participation “without obligation”. Bear in mind that the gratification of the guest does not reside in having done one thing well, but in having tried to satisfy them. Good examples of this are site-specific and immersive theatre.

The dimension of education (to learn): this is the component less overtly identifiable, especially in commercially oriented theatre. Education is at the same time one of the implicit elements of the theatre experience. One example might be a specific form of alternative performance such as “edutainment”, as found in the work of the Ashe Company or Renato Carpentieri’s Progetto Museum. Many forms of site-specific theatre can be found in is category, such as documentary theatre based on history, and forms of preventative theatre such as Galli Theatre in Germany.

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Pine and Gilmore’s structure shows how the construction of the theatre experience should not only be based on the aesthetic dimension, but must also be enriched with elements from the other three dimensions. The four “E”s are important in order to understand the passage between conventional marketing/economy based on the producers’ perspectives to an individual one focused on the client (in this case, the audience). For example, this is the passage from the generic four “P”s definition, as expressed in relation to the marketing mix in experiential economy based on the four “C”s. To explain further, the “marketing mix” is frequently the foundation used by an organisation in order to achieve its marketing goals and objectives. In its original formal, as known, the definition of the four “P”s devised by Jerome McCarth (1960) is as follows: 1.

Product;

Price;

Place;

Promotion.

Since being originally defined, these four elements have been reinforced by a further three, so now total seven, with the additional elements being: 1.

Physical evidence;

People;

Process.

However, in experiential marketing, a preferred model was developed by Robert F. Lauterborn in 1990. Known as the four “C” levels, this model incorporates: 1.

Consumer wants and needs;

Cost;

Communication;

Convenience.

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Additionally, an alternative model based on four – subsequently increasing to seven – “C”s, has been developed by Koichi Shimizu (1989 and 2003). In terms of theatre production, one of the main problems is the focus on the producer and not on the user. The use of an experiential model focuses on the needs of the theatre company in relation to the needs and the four “C”s in a perspective of business improvement and audience development.

5. Elements to be considered in non-institutionalised and independent theatre as an event experience The event experience varies according to objective characteristics (which concern the event object of experience) and subjective characteristics (which instead concern the person). At the objective level – that is, with reference to the nature and characteristics of the event itself, there are various types of experience of usage: 1.

Cultural celebrations;

Festivals and carnivals, sacred and religious ceremonies;

Pilgrimages;

Political and state events;

Artistic or entertainment experiences;

Competitions and sports performances;

Exhibitions;

Conventions and meetings.

On a subjective level – that is, with reference to the people involved, there are various factors upon which the event depends. These are as follows: 1.

Personal characteristics, such as age, sex, culture, attitudes, interests and values;

The contingent state of mind;

Any similar experiences of past events;

The role that the person plays in relation to the event.

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Owing to the nature of the type of event and the specific subjectivity, it is possible to attribute different interpretations using evaluation criteria. We can therefore distinguish between four forms of meanings:

Social: as concerns what an event can represent for a group or a community, or its function of developing a sense of community or place.

Cultural: connected to the contents of the event.

Economic: related to the capacity of the event to attract investments, financing, tourists and consumption.

Personal: giving consideration to the meaning that each subject attributes to their event experience.

This last point turns out to be particularly important, as it regards the theatre experience particular to each individual in relation to the event in which he or she participates. This experience is shaped according to individual subjectivity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and is the integrated result of cognitive, emotional and sensory factors that are difficult to separate. The relationship between person and theatre event is not limited only to the fruition of the event in the strict sense, but develops from the antecedent phase subsequent to it. Therefore the identification of the relevant moments of the event experience can take place in relation to its different phases. This theme will be further explored later in this work.

6. Audience development: a model according to experience economy In order to better define this model, it is first of all necessary to make a distinction between the various possible categories. Looking at this from the perspective of Josep Ejarque (2003), we would like to propose three options: 1.

Collectors of knowledge for whom culture is an additional element of the interest that simple entertainment can arouse.

Culturally inspired people who try to follow and understand events. They are generally people between the ages of 25 and 45, of medium/high social class, living Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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in urban and suburban environments. Often these people are collectors and they travel for many different reasons – nonetheless, they always include cultural events in their weekly schedule. 3.

Culturally motivated people who show a true passion for everything that has to do with culture. The age of this cohort ranges, on average, from 35 years upwards. These individuals tend to belong to a high social class and live in urban areas. Often they are informed culture/theatre specialists who want to deepen what is an already quite high knowledge level.

Another possibility is De Masi’s paradigm - he identifies two classes of customer (but also workers) according to the division between new ‘digital’ subjects and old ‘analogic’ subjects: 1.

Digital: the digital cohort is more optimistic about the destiny of the planet and are satisfied with the ubiquity allowed by information technology. They feel that they are ‘citizens of the world’ and they readily accept gender equality, birth control, multiraciality, inter-culturality and globalisation. Convinced that one lives only once, they tend to live well in the here and now. They are attentive to ecology, they do not differentiate too much difference between day and night, or between holidays and weekdays. Additionally they communicate by means of linguistic and aesthetic “new” channels, and; they have a relaxed attitude towards sexuality. Most interestingly, they combine nomadism with permanence.

Analogics: the analogics, on the other hand, are wary of novelties, and afraid of demographic development, immigration, and multi-raciality. This is a cohort that mistrusts new technologies and reject interculturality, birth control and euthanasia. This cohort considers violence, corruption and wars as inevitable – in fact they regard them as growing scourges. Another key characteristic is that they tend to fear the future and mythologise the past.

Independent and non-institutionalised theatre should also consider a further school of thought. Namely, the research into consumer behaviour conducted by Eric J. Arnould and Linda L. Price (1993) whose theory assigns audience experience into four categories:

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Anticipated consumption;

Purchase of the experience;

Consumption of the experience;

The memory of the consumption experience and associated nostalgia.

In relation to theatre events it is possible to distinguish four phases of the experience of fruition: 1.

The first is the pre-event, when the consumer collects information that creates interest and pushes him to deepen its knowledge about the event, contributing to the formation of expectations. Since this first phase we find important elements for the overall quality perceived by the customer: the quality of information (about programs, parking lots, facilities, services, transport, et cetera), the accuracy of details, the language used, the image, the reservation system and the prices.

The second phase is the arrival at the venue of the event, when the first impressions of the spectator are determined by factors such as the physical environment and the atmosphere, the signs, the presence of reception staff and the general state of the facilities.

The third moment is the performance, engaging in the event, which represents the moment of truth.

The last phase is the post-event, during which the organiser should listen to visitors’ feedback in order to drive improvements. Negative feedback in the form of complaints, suggestions and any adverse comments should be welcomed – only by knowing what went wrong can a better audience experience be achieved. This phase is very significant and should not be omitted, as often happens, because it is an integral part of the overall experiential supply.

With reference to composite events – which incorporate different moments of choice, purchase and use of individual events – it is more appropriate to itemise three phases of the experience of value of the overall event and to identify, for each of them, the relevant elements for evaluation purposes. Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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In the first phase, the so-called expected event, preceding the moment of the beginning of the event itself, there are already relevant aspects, for the purposes of the assessment, concerning the emotional intensity with which the expectation and the way of forming the judgment are experienced. These elements are as follows: 1.

The ways in which the event is known, for example â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the memory of previous editions, word of mouth and institutional communication in its various forms.

The feelings and emotions with which the experience is lived.

The search for information, and therefore its quality and type and related sources.

The ex-ante perception of the event on the basis of the information available and the judgments, the emotions and the sensations that derive from it.

The planning, or not, of the forms of participation in the event, such as motivations, personal programme, organisation, possible reservations.

In the second phase, following the actual realisation of the event itself - these are the relevant aspects apply to the emotions experienced, the senses involved, the knowledge acquired from the arrival on the spot right through to the end of the event:

Contact with the environment/atmosphere of the event;

Information on the performance of shows/attractions;

Participation in shows/attractions;

The peripheral services that are used - such as catering, parking and shopping.

In the third phase, the remembered event, following its completion, takes shape in the memory of what has been done, or what has been witnessed - in the form of: 1.

The benefits achieved;

The proposals for future participation, in case of repeated events;

The feelings about the event itself;

The perceived significance of the event. Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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The most relevant aspects of the above concern the impressions that the visitor takes away, in terms of emotions, sensations and judgments. This type of marketing has been theorised and elaborated since the 1980s by Bernd Schmitt of Columbia University. According to Schmitt (1999 and 2015), the primary objective of this strategy is to identify what kind of experience will best enhance the product. Also according to Schmitt, there are five different types of experience, which he called SEMs, or Strategic Experiential Modules: 1.

Sense and sensorial experiences – ie: experiences that involve sensory perception. One example is The Blind Theatre developed by Shiva Falahi, Edy Poppy, Narve Hovdenakk, Veronika Bökelmann and Kate Pendry. Its mission is to turn the body into the stage of a sensorial theatre, as stated in the mission of the company, creating a half hour long dive into a different sensorial reality.

Feeling and emotional experiences – ie: that is experiences that involve feelings and emotions. This is the case, for example, of the one-to-one theatre proposed by companies such as Ontoerend Goed from Belgium. Additionally, performances and productions focused on openly playing with the feelings of the audience need to be considered, such as, historically, the performance of Teatro Panico and others.

Thinking and cognitive experiences – ie: creative experiences. Examples of this are the documentary theatre, the productions of verbatim theatre practice, Morenobased psychodrama.

Active and physical experiences – ie: experiences that involve physicality. site-specific theatre, specifically the promenade type, that focus on act experience, among others. Additionally, performance in “conventional” theatre can be considered as act experience. It is the case of, for example, Dignità Autonome di Prostituzione by Luciano Melchionna. This is one of the most successful theatre productions in recent time in Europe, as described in its performance description: “[…]Actors are portrayed as prostitutes, protected at the mercy of the spectator; they can be chosen, examined, and exchanged for their art or for their heart. Dressed in their robes or dressing gowns, they hook clients or they allow clients to pick them up while a ‘strange family’ who runs the ‘bordello has the arduous task of negotiating the prices of each performance. Following this negotiation, the clients – comprising of one or two Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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people or even a small group - go with the prostitute to a place where the theatrical performance happens. Hence the performance is a monologue, a dance or an installation that lasts ten to fifteen minutes”. 5.

Relational experiences – ie: experiences that result from being in relationship with a group. Examples of this are the experience of Business Theatre as first developed in Canada by Christian Poissonneau and which then spread into France, Germany, Italy and other European countries. This thinking also extends to the form of theatre experience based on, for example, Jacob Levi Moreno – a, leading social scientist and Romanian-American psychiatrist, psycho-sociologist and educator – who was the founder of psychodrama and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy.

The customer experience, that is the experience that the customer lives, is considered a useful reference in the management of marketing for companies in all sectors, and this rule is no exception. The underlying principle is that the generation of value through events is strongly correlated with the ability to involve people on a cognitive, affective and sensory level. This offers them the opportunity to live experiences according to their needs and desires, in a manner consistent with their expectations. The impact of such an event on the community that hosts it is connected to the commercial, touristic, financial and logistic flows that it manages to create. These, in turn, are influenced to a large extent on the degree of user involvement. This then depends on the potential that the event offers them to live satisfying experiences. The impact can be assessed considering its ability to generate market, economic-financial, socio-cultural and environmental value. Regarding the market value, we must consider that today the creation of events is one of the most important components of the territorial strategies that aim to ‘import customers’ in the market – in this case the theatre market – rather than to export products. In this context we should also contextualise independent theatre. In terms of market value, a further impact of the successful event on the host location is the growth of its level of notoriety and of the information that flows on it, generated by word of mouth of visitors and by the attention of the media. The economic impact and the theatrical event itself can be summarised as follows:

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Direct – concerning the total expenses incurred by all the subjects taking part in the event.

Indirect – deriving from the distribution of financial resources in the local economy as a result of the demand that the companies involved in organising and sponsoring the event turn to their suppliers instrumental goods and financial resources.

Induced – which means generated over time thanks to increases in consumption levels, employment, income, production and added value triggered by the realisation of the event. These effects are chained together and dispersed in space, as well as in time, and therefore are difficult to qualify.

Looking at the physical environmental impact of theatrical events – especially in independent theatre – it is imperative to make the most of the time event specific services and infrastructures. An excellent example is can be found in different variations of site-specific theatre which may be defined as follows: 1.

Study/stage based productions: these cannot be considered as genuinely site-specific.

Studio as site: when using theatrical space in an unusual way, such as acting in the corridors. However, this cannot yet be considered site-specific.

Site as contextual container: when a location is chosen for the characteristics of a given representation, for example staging William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in a forest.

Site generic: based on the use of a particular and unusual type of place, such as a soccer field.

Site responsive: based on the use of a specific resource for the show, for example a representation on the stern of a merchant ship.

It is therefore necessary that the system of offering the event is managed using a logical framework of territorial marketing that focuses on the following points:

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To intercept the new needs related to leisure time, to structure an innovative proposition value of the event, and ultimately be able to satisfy a high-value demand profile.

To focus on the overall experience of the user in order to stimulate and involve him in many ways.

To seek an extreme coherence of the theme of the event with the identity and vocation of the territory. It is therefore necessary to conceive, plan and manage the event drawing upon the effort of fostering relations and interactions between the different actors of the territory, stimulating social cohesion, strengthening the sense of identity and, consequently, reinforcing the level of consent and involvement with respect to the event.

To effectively manage the network of relationships that are created with and among the various actors taking part in the event, against a logical backdrop of total relational marketing.

To manage the socio-economic repercussions of the event in such a way that the transfer of value to the benefit of the territory favours the increase in levels of satisfaction, consensus, trust and commitment on the part of the many stakeholders and policy makers involved.

To this end, strategies can be based on the following critical foundations, bearing in mind that the first and the last two are closely related to non-institutionalised and independent theatre practice: 1.

Iconic structures: the realisation of events so that they become a symbolic element of the territory.

Mega-events: the propensity to organise events lies in their lower cost compared to physical infrastructures - such as a new museum - and the possibility of being able to vary them every year. It is clear in this case, for example, whether the activity of companies that started as non-institutionalised and nowadays are purely commercial and expert in mega events, such as La Fura del Baus.

Thematisation: consisting of a focus on a specific theme, connected in an authentic way to the aforementioned genius loci. Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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Re-evalation/use of tangible/intangible heritage. Many theatre groups, such as Rimini Protokoll in Germany, are basing their image on the revaluation of cultural heritage/identity, creating a specific site-specific performance and theatrical experience.

7. Preliminary elements in theatre and social media communication Because theatre organisations have direct contact with the public, they are interested in using social media communication. However, it is important to point out that communication via social media requires avoiding too much commercial content and the typical language of advertising communications, in order to have a message that is effective and positively received. Specifically, this means that: 1.

The messaging should indicate clear benefits for the user (whether educational, entertaining or informative).

The tone should be respectful, never official or institutional, preferably light, but without â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;overdoingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; it.

Interaction should be frequent: opening a channel of communication through social media is easy and fast, but it has to be monitored and regularly updated, otherwise it will become ineffective or even counterproductive.

The choice of the type of social media used also depends largely on the characteristics of the target. The Forrester Research Institute classifies people as follow according to their level of activity on the web: 1.

Inactive (they do not do anything);

Spectator (they read blogs and forums, watch videos);

Participant (they are active on Facebook and social networks);

Collector (they vote and watch video and news);

Critic (they comment blogs and forums, review books and products);

Conversationalist (they write on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others);

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Creator (they publish blogs and websites and upload videos andor podcasts).

The main consequence of the advertising channels on the web is to create promotional campaigns that are not perceived as invasive by the reader/user. More, they are perceived as advice relating to their cultural choices. This creates a virtuous circle, both for the image of the promoter of the oal of the campaign. This having been said, the three main reasons for investing in social media are as follows: 1.

Reaching a specific target;

Achieving a remarkable economic saving;

Permitting a different perception of the advertising message.

For example, regarding live tweeting both past and present, let us regard the impact of an Instagram story broadcast, bearing in mind that live social media takes the form of the storytelling of an event. It allows one to give visibility to a happening, and to share it with those who are not participating in the first person. Its use is important to companies during off-line and online events in order to extend their reach and integration with online followers and communities. Another example is advertising platforms, such as Google Ads (and, until July 2018 AdWords). Google Ads is the advertising platform of Google that permits the analysis of the publication of text ads, images and videos on search results pages and on sites of the Google content network. Since its inception in the form of AdWords, it has represented a real innovation in online advertising. This is because its diffusion among the search marketing tools is clear, and â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the same time â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that the notoriety of Google as a search engine, has contributed to the popularity of its advertising platform. This this route offers many opportunities in terms of visibility, not least because advertisements can be published as text, images and videos in the form of two main options: 1.

Keyword targeting: ads are displayed according to selected keywords, both when they are searched on Google and when they are relevant to the page content of one of the Google content network sites.

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Placement targeting: ads appear on sites that are part of the integral content network, based on those words specified when setting up the campaign.

The use of social media within the advertising campaign is therefore a fundamental weapon for renewing the image of theatre companies and attracting different targets. The main challenges lie in creating an interesting page and making the continuous and constant effort to take care of it and manage it. The content must always contain topics concerning the main interest of visitors, plus there needs to be photos, videos and news on all events and initiatives. According to experts, to interact effectively with Facebook fans means to consider the page as if it were a “VIP room”. In other words to think of it as a private room where the best customers are entertained in an exclusive relationship, allowing them to read and view content that feels like it has been created especially for them. Additionally this ‘VIP room’ can be used to issue invitations to previews and keep followers informed about sales, special offers and promotions. The advantages are many allowing the brand to approach its audience through the most widespread social network, according to patterns of viral trending and coverage.

8. Media planning and performance Assuming a plan is formulated that is clearly aimed at optimising the impact of communication and advertising activities, it is important to remain aware that the following points are key to maximising ongoing publicity coverage: 1.

A well-structured, carefully co-ordinated presence on social media is fundamental for achieving the most effective impact from theatre publicity. Social networks are an essential and privileged means of communication, even more for targets such as young people, who are often not easy to reach.

Social media seen from a two-pronged perspective: at the same time “showcase” and an “access gate”. The main objective is to address the target with non-traditional languages and – above all – to ensure it is accessible. For example Instagram stories, photos, videos, music files, tweets and mobile apps all allow you to present events,

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shows and initiatives from multiple points of view, diversifying communication and extending its reach. 3.

Looking at things from a long-term perspective, the goal is certainly to increase and enhance an innovative and effective communication system, but also to put it â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;at the serviceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the theatre company with the objective of continuing to expand and retain public attention.

The main objectives to be achieved are: 1.

Cognitive objectives: a campaign on social networks succeeds effectively, with lower investments compared to traditional media, to launch a new brand or to promote brands and repositioning. Even the classic communication objectives such as memory and recognition, familiarity and relevance find a privileged and relevant drive in the participatory media. Cognitive objectives are: awareness, knowledge, recognition, familiarity, diversity, relevance, memorisation and mental association.

Emotional goals: brand image and reputation are increasingly moving on the web, as well as the need of people to be involved through direct experience with the brand. Emotionality involves a judgment (positive or negative). The emotional objectives are: reputation, esteem, evaluation, judgment, preference, attitude, influence, trust and involvement.

Behavioural objectives: each campaign involves a specific call-to-action pragmatic, modulable and detectable. There are quantitative indicators (from the number of products sold up to the Net Promoter Score to analyse word of mouth), and qualitative indicators (such as the analysis of feedback and conversations through matrices with performance variables). Behavioural goals are: action, purchase, loyalty, word of mouth, conversation, feedback, co-creation, relationship.

The goal of a media plan is to increase the purchase of tickets, preferably online, and through especially created applications. Ultimately this means that all the theatre performances offered by the company will increase levels of participation on the part of young people in the cultural activities promoted. This can be secured thanks to a greater presence on the net which will improve brand awareness, and create emotional bonds, retention and buzz. Armando Rotondi A business model for non-institutionalised and independent theatre

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Methods of implementing such a project include: 1.

Creating a greater number of blogs and communities, in order to encourage exchanges of opinions and “participated confrontation” in the virtual environments frequented by the target audience.

Focusing on using social media like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. Additionally, create a range of online blog and communities to stimulate virtual dialogue and conversations.

Developing specific applications for i-phones and other smartphones, in order to reach the largest possible percentage of the target market.

Purchasing advertising space.

The main target is represented by young people ranging from 18 to 25 years, with a secondary – and growing – market of people aged 25 to 35 years. The retention target market, on the other hand, is the adult-age audience aged 35 and over. In conclusion, the main ways of communication – including the traditional ones – to be used for public promotion are the following: posters, posters and leaflet, press; radio (no doubt still an important channel for the dissemination of a message, given its high ratings) and the internet. Not to be underestimated is the use of unconventional marketing and events – for example: experiential marketing could be useful to experience ‘virtually’ via a small piece of emotion deriving from the stage but adapted, such as seen in the live stories posted on Instagram.

Bibliography ARNOULD, Eric J., PRICE, Linda L. (1993), “River Magic: Extraordinary Experience and the Extended Service Encounter”, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 20, 1, June, pp. 24–45. BAXTER, Lisa (2010), “From Luxury to necessity. The changing role of qualitative researching the arts”, in Daragh O’Reilly and Finola Kerrigan (eds.), Marketing the Arts, London-New York: Routledge, pp. 121-140. BORDIEU, Pierre (1993), The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (1984), edited and introduced by Randal Johnson, New York: Columbia University Press.

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CARBONE, Lou, HAECKEL Steve (1994), “Engineering customer experiences”, Marketing Management, 3, pp. 8–19. CAUSEY, Matthew (2007), Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture, London-New York: Routledge. DE MASI, Domenico (2000), L’ozio creativo, Milano: Rizzoli. DE MASI, Domenico (2007), Il futuro del lavoro, Milano: Rizzoli. DE MASI, Domenico (2013), La fantasia e la concretezza. Creatività individuale e di gruppo, Milano: Rizzoli. DE MASI, Domenico (2016), Una semplice rivoluzione. Lavoro, ozio, creatività: nuove rotte per una società smarrita, Milano: Rizzoli. DE VEREAUX, Constance ed. (2019), Arts and Cultural Management: Sense and Sensibilities in the State of the Field, London-New York: Routledge. EJARQUE, Josep (2003), “Destination Revolution”, Le pagine di Risposte Turismo, vol. 2, pp. 20-26. EVERSMANN, Peter (2004), The experience of the theatrical event, in Vicki Ann Cremona, Peter Eversmann, Hans van Maanen, Willmar Sauter, and John Tulloch (eds.), Theatrical Events. Border, Dynamics, Frames, Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, pp.139-174. HANSEN, Louise Ejgod (2014a), “Behaviour and attitude. The Theatre Talks method and audience development”, International Journal of Cultural Policy e-pub. ahead of print. HANSEN, Louise Ejgod (2014b), “The democratic potential of Theatre Talks”, Nordic Theatre Studies, 25, pp. 10-21. HAZELWOOD, Emma, LAWSON, Rob, AITKEN, Rob (2009), “An essential guide to audience development”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 27, 6, pp.789-804 KAWASHIMA Nobuko (2000), Beyond the Division of Attenders vs. Non-attenders: a study into audience development in policy and practice, Warwick: Centre for Cultural Policy Research. LAUTERBOM, Bob (1990), “New Marketing Litany. Four P’sPasse. Four C’s Take Over”, Advertising Age, 61, 4, pp. 26-32. LINDELOF, Anja Mølle (2015), “Audience Development and its Blind Spot”, International Journal of Cultural Policy, vol 21(2), pp. 200-218. McCarthy, Jerome (1960), Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, Homewood: Richard D. Irwin. PEARSON, Mike (2010), Site-Specific Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,. PINE, Joseph B., GILMORE, James H. (1998), “Welcome to the Experience Economy”, Harvard Business Review, July-August, pp. 97-105. RADBOURNE, Jennifer, JOHANSON, Katya, GLOW, Hilary (2010), “Empowering Audiences to Measure Quality”, Particip@tions, 7(2), pp. 360-379. REASON, Matthew (2010), “Asking the audience. Audience research and the experience of theatre”, About performance, 10, pp. 15–34. SAUTER W. (2000), The Theatrical Event. Dynamics of Performance and Perception, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

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SCHMITT, Bernd (2010), “Experience Marketing: Concepts, Frameworks and Consumer Insights”, Foundations and Trends in Marketing, vol. 5, 2, pp. 55–112. SCHMITT, Bernd (2015), “Experiential Marketing: A New Framework for Design and Communications”, DMI, vol. 10, 2, Spring 1999, republished in 40th Anniversary Issue, pp. 19-26. SCHMITT, Bernd, SIMOSON, Alex (1997), Marketing Aesthetics: The strategic management of brands, identity, and image, New York: The Free Press. SCOLLEN, Rebecca (2008), “Bridging the Divide. Regional Performing Arts Centres and Nontheatregoers introduced”, Applied Theatre Researcher/Idea Journal, 9, pp. 1-13. SCOLLEN, Rebecca (2009), “Talking Theatre is more than a Test Drive. Two Audience Development Methodologies under Review”, International Journal of Arts Management, 12(4), pp. 413. TRIGG, Andrew B.. (2001), “Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption”, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 35, No. 1, Mar., pp. 99-115.

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Case Studies

Special Monographic Issue Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe

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Spectacular ad hoc structures as a further step in the collective creation: The Make a Move project Eugen Păsăreanu University of Arts Târgu-Mureș *****

1. Introduction Paradoxically, the performing artist has always had a dual nature: on the one hand, having his own searches – aesthetic, technical, sensitive, and on the other hand as a member of a group – as a stage partner through which those artistic pursuits are fulfilled, either on a reflective level – as a member of a community through which the world around him is measured or understood. Thus, the artist has always been not only in the position of the creator, but also in one of a negotiator – with himself, with the stage partner, with the public, with the funder, in the process of materialising his scenic creed.

2. Co-creating techniques: a historic perspective In different stages of the history of theatre, the artist has been dependent and influenced by the others and by the space in which it had to manifest itself. For example, the performing space can be for the artist a place that delimits and frames the sacred (Ancient Greece and Rome). Alternatively, it can be a delimitation and a framing of the expression (in the realist, naturalistic theatre), to reach with the 20th century a place that generates its own stories (the ‘site-specific’ theatre) or a space that is virtualised in 21st century (a space created using immersive video projections). Within the same structure of interdependence we can also see the relationship between the artist and the stage partner – real, imaginary or virtual – or between the artists who create by the devised method. Eugen Păsăreanu Case Study #1 – Spectacular ad hoc structures as a further step in the collective creation: The Make a Move project

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If we think of the troubadours of the Middle Ages or the traveling groups of improvisation theatre, such as those of commedia dell’arte, we can see how the connection between a formed structure, space and artist can be flexible, the artist being the one who populates the performing space, relatively little dependent on the geography of the place. Naturally, in the case of the commedia dell’arte, the artists adapted their typical scenarios according to the last stories of the place where they performed, but these elements remained rather ornaments to attract the public, rather than substantial modifications of the performed material. Things change with advent of the 18th and 19th centuries, when the various forms of patronage – such as protectorate and funding granted to artists – are institutionalised either in the form of national theatres or in other forms of subsidy, reaching a special diversification in the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. To prove relevant to the public, independent theatre companies have developed their own techniques and methods, one of these being the devised technique or the collective creation, in which “the work was originally created through democratic processes of exploration using many forms of improvisation” (Prendergast 2009: 18). Thus, the group of artists jointly explores a problem and democratically decides the steps in the artistic processing of the case. In turn, the collective creation can be directed to an applied theatre form – such as if we think about the forum theatre, for example, or the different forms of theatre in education. Alternatively, it may have a scenic destiny, for example, a documentary theatre performance. Positioning itself as a rather aesthetic exploration, or claiming from the theatro-social practices of Augusto Boal, in which the dramatic art is used rather as an instrument for raising awareness of social problems, the collaborative creation remains anchored by the desire of the group that uses it. Two famous 20th century examples include The Living Theatre and Rimini Protokoll. As Olivia Grecea points out Collective creation becomes a synecdoche of the paradigm of globalisation, new technologies, intelligent systems and humanity that is redefining itself by referring to the accelerated changes of the last decades. However, it also becomes a topos of the rehabilitation of the contemporary man: by confronting with the otherness and by creating a context in which the individual is put in relation to the structures he belongs to, which define him and which he permanently influences through his behavior and decisions (2017: 290).

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Devised or collective creative practices become, in this way, forms of the contemporary ethos – an ethos dominated by collective responsibility, interactivity and technology.

3. Contemporary applications of the co-creation/devised technique: the Make a Move project In the case of the European Make a Move project, carried out between 2018 and 2020, ten artists from different cultural spaces came to collaborate for ten days in co-creation laboratories to finally show theatrical work-in-progress moments. The laboratories were held in Galway (Ireland), Rijeka (Croatia) and Târgu-Mureș (Romania), and ended with public presentations of various “snapshots” of moments. The project took the devised technique further in the risky direction to bring together artists not seeking an aesthetic or practical affinity, or to unite around a social or ideological desire, but simply following the selection of a jury, depending on the artistic quality – defined by innovative practices and with a certain impact among the public. The artists signed up for the project following a public call, knowing that they would work with other independent artists in the area of movement-based theatre. With different backgrounds, artists thus came to generate their own aesthetic and semantic negotiation in order to achieve a theatrical moment – a negotiation that also included the exploration of space, the moment and the abilities to communicate in multicultural contexts, and less aligned with political or aesthetic affinities of the participants. In the case of financing these art forms, we can see that ad hoc spectacular structures are formed, which, unlike the theatre groups that use the devised technique, do not have as their common denominator a direction of aesthetic or social search, but become sufficient through themselves. Liberated from the repetition of a repertoire performance, of the work and routine within a company, the artists are given the opportunity of a unique exploration, together with other creators with no tangents, in a discovery of the other by common negotiated methods, in rather neutral spaces – Galway, Rijeka, Târgu-Mureș. These spaces do not belong to a group or a majority that decides the direction of the approach, as the artists do not create together for common ideological reasons. Thus, these spectacular ad hoc structures may co-exist with traditional theatrical institutions, with independent artists having the advantage of the uniqueness of the context and of the ad hoc group formed. If we are to consider Prendergast’s definition of Eugen Păsăreanu Case Study #1 – Spectacular ad hoc structures as a further step in the collective creation: The Make a Move project

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democratisation within the process of collective creation, democratisation becomes even more pronounced in this case, through the mix of participants and the inclusion of artists from different places of the world – regardless of the degree of democratisation of the space from which they belong. We can say that the workshops of collective creation in which the artists do not know each other and do not work together in a previously defined approach, in a neutral space, form ad hoc theatre structures that can arouse a special interest both from the point of view of theatrical praxis, as well as managerial or public impact.

4. Conclusion The element of perishability by the very nature of the ad hoc structure can confer a unique aura of the unique experience to which the participants (both creators and spectators) participate. Here the difference between the structures consecrated in the form of companies or theatre groups that approach the devised techniques and the spectacular ad hoc structures, born through such projects: the ad hoc structures become vehicles of regeneration of creative energies in artists through the nature of international exchange of practices and through common approaches, positioning itself as a step against the routine and the theatrical recipe, generating mobile human forms, dependent on the meeting between different artists in that neutral space. Thus, the degree of negotiation and the need for tolerance can be higher in such newly-created structures, than in a theatre group or company united by the form of practice, with performers who know each other and who usually act together. If the devised technique breaks down the previous hierarchies into spectacular practice, by flexing the relation of performer-director-public, the laboratories that generate common creation between artists that do not know each other, performed on neutral ground, succeed a more extensive democratisation and negotiation. Bibliography GRECEA, Olivia (2017), “Teatrul devised (Creația teatrală colectivă)”, Utopie, instrument și teatru politic, București: Eikon. PRENDERGAST, Monica, SAXTON, Juliana, eds. (2009), Applied Theatre. International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice, Bristol: Intellect. Eugen Păsăreanu Case Study #1 – Spectacular ad hoc structures as a further step in the collective creation: The Make a Move project

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Tappeto Volante and the site-specific as an event Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

1. Profile of the company Tappeto Volante s.r.l. is a theatre company that specialises in the creation, design, production, organisation and implementation of major site-specific performative events of an artistic, spectacular and cultural nature. It is directed by Domenico Maria Corrado, and appears to be one of the very few Italian companies specialising in the field of site-specific theatre and territorial revaluation. Corrado started his activity in this field in 1995, with the aim of finding a valid alternative to conventional theatre. According to Corrado, film and television have inflated the habits of the public by modifying the theatrical languages, with times of staging much smaller than in the past, because the public is no longer used to keeping the times and rhythms of the canonical spectacle. Conventional theatre nowadays today has the need to bring on stage the so-called “renowned” or “famous” performer (“Star”), well-known personalities that allow to have a large number of spectators thanks to their celebrity. This element causes, for Corrado, a fractionation of the theatrical offer, both culturally and qualitatively. Tappeto Volante’s first show, Plauto nei luoghi e nei tempi degli antichi pompeiani was staged in 1995, in the excavations of Pompeii with the purpose of allowing the audience to attend an event that would let them experience the place and, at the same time, a theatrical representation. The most famous scenes of some plays by Plautus were extrapolated then performed in specific part of the excavations of Pompeii, such as the Basilica, the “Casa di Venere in Conchiglia”, the Gym of gladiators, etc. The audience was accompanied by an actor who played Plautus and was therefore projected into a surreal dimension. Armando Rotondi Case Study #2 – Tappeto Volante and the site-specific as an event

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The success of this initiative was such that the Pompeii Archaeological Superintendence made the request to design a similar project for the following summer. In 1996 the show L’ultima notte di Pompei was created, inspired by the texts of various ancient authors, such as Plautus and the Greek Menander. In this context, the element the most attracted the audience was the opportunity to experience the ruins in the evening. Many other similar projects were created, such as L’ultima notte di Ercolano, staged from 1998 to 2000, with the need to raise and re-evaluate the place, in agreement with the Ministry of Culture. The prerequisite for the birth of new shows is always the same: to identify a monumental, environmental, historical, archaeological site and to hypothesise a show to enhance the place through this way of experience theatre. Corrado himself affirms that the protagonists of his shows are the performance and the place, and not the famous actor. The component of the imagination, of the charm, of the suggestion is given by the place. The offer of Tappeto Volante, through the years, has been divided into shows in different locations all with the same register. Examples are: 1.

L’Inferno di Dante in Pertosa Caves, Province of Salerno;

Il Paradiso di Dante at the Arechi Castle in Salerno;

L’Orlando Furioso at Stabian Castle of Rocca Imperiale, Calabria;

L’Eneide di Virgilio in the Paestum ruins;

L’Aulularia di Plauto in the Pompeii ruins;

Romeo e Giulietta in Caserta Vecchia;

Il Purgatorio di Dante in Chartreuse of Padula, Province of Salerno.

This programming demonstrates the high specialisation of the company in the sector of site-specific theatre as a dynamic system with local stakeholders over the long term.

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2. Example of performance L’Inferno di Dante alle Grotte di Pertosa has been probably the most famous performance produced by Tappeto Volante, taking place in the Caves of the Angelo di Pertosa in the province of Salerno – a location that attracts thousands of tourists every year who choose it for different aspects ranging from naturalistic interest. The first edition of the show dates back to 2006, and its peculiarity lies in the fact that there are no wings or backdrops, but it all takes place in the prehistoric scenario of the caves, about 35 million-year old. The same spectators move within the scene going towards the various characters. The path of this promenade site-specific, in fact, winds along a route of about a kilometre, in tunnels dug into the bowels of the mountain, characterised by the succession of large cavities adorned with imposing stalact-stalagmitic groups and extraordinary morphologies of concretion that almost completely cover the ground. It is a show that aims also at rediscovering and enhancing the history, culture and heritage of the territory in which it is staged, having also elements of edutainment. The performances are held every Friday morning and Saturday night, with the aid of a poignant and unreleased soundtrack written by Enzo Gragnianiello, fifteen installations of contemporary art, a hundred infernal images reproducing, damned and lost souls, multimedia reconstructions of the infernal groups, and thirty between actors, dancers and extras, but above all with the poetry of Dante. Elements such as these that make it a show that is unique and exciting. The audience is divided into groups of 30/35 units and entrusted to a “Dante” who welcomes it at the entrance and after having recited the entire first canto of the Inferno, introduces its own group of spectators/visitors in the caves. Near an artistic installation, two metres high and one metre point four wide, which reproduces the image of Beatrice, Dante describes the meeting of Virgil with Beatrice – sometimes using the language of the Supreme Poet other times a dramatic, incisive and descriptive summary. Through the door that bears the famous words “per me si va nella città dolente”, the audience with Dante sits on a boat, piloted by Charon, with whom you cross the Acheron. Here there was no need to resort to artifice because the caves are crossed by the underground river, Negro, that generates a pond and a waterfall, entering the bowels of the earth until arriving on

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the bank of the first circle. Here Dante sums up the function of the circle and indicates Homer, Ovid and Lucan. Overcoming the reluctance of the “Diavolo Minosse”, the audience arrives in the second circle where he meets Paolo and Francesca, where Dante recites the poetic verses of the fifth canto. Then the third, fourth and fifth circles are crossed, meeting the various devils: Cerberus, Pluto and Flegias, guarding each of the circles, and the souls of the sinners who suffer their pain within them. Near the sixth circle, a host of devils, with a “tarantolata” pantomime, blocks the passage to the Dante and his group, preventing him from continuing until the arrival of an angel, which opens the door of the Dite and allows the group to continue. In the sixth circle, set in the socalled “Great Hall”, the audience meets Farinata degli Uberti and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, who entertain the Dante reciting the verses of the Comedia. Following audience meets Pier delle Vigne, transformed into a tree of Pruno, Ulysses and Diomedes, Count Ugolino and, finally, Lucifer.

3. Business elements L’Inferno di Dante alle Grotte di Pertosa – then L’Inferno di Dante alle Grotte di Castelcivita and L’Inferno di Dante nel Museo del Sottosuolo di Napoli – presents an experiential concept, which offers opportunities for fun and entertainment but also for evasion and education (cultural enrichment) through an aesthetic experience. In particular, the two aspects, spectacular and cultural, have the aim of strengthening the overall appeal of the event and supporting its underlying mission: to generate value in a broad sense, beyond the income from ticket sales. The atmosphere of the show not only allows the satisfaction of the individual aesthetic pleasure of the guest, with the possibility of visiting the routes of the caves, but it is also interesting in the opportunity given to spectators to start a path of cultural learning, through the possibility of interaction with the actors of the event. From this point of view, a distinctive aspect of the event is the total absence of barriers between actors and the public: the empathic relationship and the physicality of the relationship that develops between spectators and actors is indeed very strong and highly engaging, both on the cognitive level and the emotional one. The development of this interactive process is therefore oriented towards generating a thought experience, stimulating the intellect of the individual and activating creative and cognitive Armando Rotondi Case Study #2 – Tappeto Volante and the site-specific as an event

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experiences. In this sense, the show – even if it is covered by hyper-real components – can be conceived as an event that meets the need for identity research of the individuals participating in it. At the same time, the specific historical roots of the host can be conveyed to the spectators via a sense of collective identity in a world characterised by continuous transformation. The connotations at the base of the event concept affect the development of the host territory also with a view to long-term growth. In general, going beyond the proceeds of the tickets sold, which basically ensure the operation of the event, it can be said that this had: 1.

Positive effects of image: the success of Dante’s Inferno is contributing to the development of Pertosa’s reputation in the provincial, regional and interregional context. The show is deeply linked to the image of the place that hosts it, having become a real symbol and an essential component of the city of Pertosa, which has thus been able to initiate a significant process of reconverting its image.

Impacts on the local receptive stakeholders thanks to the show.

In general, it can be stated that the event has been able to trigger a virtuous process between positive repercussions, satisfaction of stakeholders and policy makers, creating a dynamic system between private alternative company and local public institutions.

Bibliography CARBONE, Lou, HAECKEL Steve (1994), “Engineering customer experiences”, Marketing Management, 3, pp. 8–19. EJARQUE, Josep (2003), “Destination Revolution”, Le pagine di Risposte Turismo, vol. 2, pp. 20-26. EVERSMANN, Peter (2004), The experience of the theatrical event, in Vicki Ann Cremona, Peter Eversmann, Hans van Maanen, Willmar Sauter, and John Tulloch (eds.), Theatrical Events. Border, Dynamics, Frames, Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, pp.139-174. HANSEN, Louise Ejgod (2014a), “Behaviour and attitude. The Theatre Talks method and audience development”, International Journal of Cultural Policy e-pub. ahead of print. PEARSON, Mike (2010), Site-Specific Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,. PINE, Joseph B., GILMORE, James H. (1998), “Welcome to the Experience Economy”, Harvard Business Review, July-August, pp. 97-105. SCHMITT, Bernd (2010), “Experience Marketing: Concepts, Frameworks and Consumer Insights”, Foundations and Trends in Marketing, vol. 5, 2, pp. 55–112. Armando Rotondi Case Study #2 – Tappeto Volante and the site-specific as an event

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SCHMITT, Bernd (2015), “Experiential Marketing: A New Framework for Design and Communications”, DMI, vol. 10, 2, Spring 1999, republished in 40th Anniversary Issue, pp. 19-26. SCHMITT, Bernd, SIMOSON, Alex (1997), Marketing Aesthetics: The strategic management of brands, identity, and image, New York: The Free Press. SCOLLEN, Rebecca (2008), “Bridging the Divide. Regional Performing Arts Centres and Nontheatregoers introduced”, Applied Theatre Researcher/Idea Journal, 9, pp. 1-13. .

Armando Rotondi Case Study #2 – Tappeto Volante and the site-specific as an event

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Teatro de Los Sentidos and the “theatre of experience” Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

Teatro de Los Sentidos is an international group of artists-researchers based in Barcelona with twenty years’ of experience under the artistic direction of the company’s founder, Colombian anthropologist and dramaturge Enrique Vargas. They are developers of games researching upon the poetics of the senses. They have developed a methodology that connects the sensorial languages, the poetics of games and theatrical creation. They make experiences, which blur the usual line between audience and actors in traditional theatre schemes, to foster an interactive and creative participation of the audience. The audience is invited to explore their labyrinthine spaces as if it was participating in a big game. Looking closely to the experiential work of this company it is easy to see a possible connection with the art form of the Happenings: “The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible” (Kaprow 2002: 260). As for the Happenings, the way the performances of Teatro de los Sentidos are conceived is far from the usual theatre habits. Nothing is taken for granted, not even the space, which is not a single performance space as in the conventional sense. In Teatro de los Sentidos a performance often takes place over several locales. Thus, the audience experiences a completely different feeling of space. This is not exclusive anymore but more close to a fluid effect, whereas a single space is considered static. This can be called the landscape effect more common in modern paintings or even in the way space is often organised in dreams. The result is that the audience is not looking anymore for a construction of the performance based on the chronology of the events, but starts to use all the senses to find a personal route inside the experience. Valentina Temussi Case Study #3 – Teatro de Los Sentidos and the “theatre of experience”

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This type of theatre is the perfect example of what Peter Brook calls the “Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible”. The “Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible” is related to the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts. We are all aware that most of life escapes our senses. One powerful explanation of the various arts is that they talk of patterns which we can only begin to recognise when they manifest themselves as rhythms or shapes (Cf. Brook 1990). The organisation and perception of time follow closely that of space. With the organisation of the performance over multiple spaces, the movement of the audience will directly determine time. The collective audience is now split into individuals and each individual has a journey inside the performance that is dictated by his or senses and, therefore, by his or her personal perception. A big difference with the Happenings is the fact that Teatro de Los Sentidos is a theatre company organising theatre performances that are repeatable. The possibility of repetition of the performance is granted by the existence of a detailed frame in which the fluidity of the events is collected. The company sets up a unique pattern that allows the audience to feel independent whilst the experience is organised into a specific time sequence, usually working like a journey. There is never any possibility of going back and there are a series of turning points that are collective. Individuals are driven through a series of events that only happen in a specific order. The audience of Teatro de Los Sentidos is engaged in the performance both as a single individual and as a crowd. When the audience is engaged like a crowd, it follows a pattern similar to the epic theatre. The audience becomes, therefore, a collective in crucial places of the performance. In these points the theatrical action, likewise the epic theatre, is easily recognisable as something that we all have experienced in every day life, for instance an orchestra band walking down the street. The experience of watching a music event in the street is something that the audience recognise and to which it can easily relate without struggling to make an interpretation. This sensation of something known, for an audience is very relaxing. The relaxed audience is then ready to accept an individual and more intimate approach from the actors who cn now include their audience in actions that are much more inspired by the dreamy realm.

Valentina Temussi Case Study #3 – Teatro de Los Sentidos and the “theatre of experience”

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The audience lives an experience that is both personal and unique inside a safe, collective context. This approach to time is also similar to the epic theatre because of the organisation of different collective moments throughout the performance: Epic theatre is in league with the course of time in an entirely different way from that of the tragic theatre. Because suspense belongs less to the outcome than to the individual events, this theatre can cover the greatest spans of time (Benjamin 2014: 65).

The experiential theatre is granted by the total absence of a hero in the story. This is the story of the events the audience live both as a single guest and as a collective crowd. The collective experience gives a concrete value to the single one even though this last one belongs to the world of dreams, the world of the “Invisible-Made-Visible” one.

Bibliography BROOK, Peter (1990), The Empty Space (1968), London: Penguin Books. KAPROW, Allan (2002), “Assemblages, Environments and Happenings”, in Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (eds.) The Twentieth- Century Performance Reader, London-New York: Routledge, pp. 260270. PAGLIARO, Maria (2016), Todo ya está aquí aunque no se vea : Enrique Vargas y el Teatro de Los Sentidos, Barcelona: Corre La Voz SL.

Valentina Temussi Case Study #3 – Teatro de Los Sentidos and the “theatre of experience”

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Wild Theatre and the establishment of a non-institutionalised theatre company in an emergency extra-EU context Lyudmyla Honcharova University of Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo *****

There were no massive changes in Ukrainian Theatre till Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan Revolution) in 2014. Before this, theatre was distanced from current issues of society and was not connected to the needs of modern World. In other words it was in a state of stagnation. Moreover, the problem was not only in theatre repertoire or the way of staging â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but also that the Ukrainian audience was not ready to accept experiment and boldness in theatre. The most important issue to consider is how Revolution of Dignity altered Ukrainian Theatre arena. During Euromaidan, conversations were started between theatre practitioners and critics as to how this revolution could change Ukrainian Theatre. This gave rise to a chance to eliminate apathy on the part of both actors and audience alike, as people were now experiencing the authenticity of a genuinely united act. As a result, a new independent theatre company Wild Theatre was founded in Kyiv in 2016 by Yaroslava Kravchenko. An independent theatre company, Wild Theatre began to talk with audience only about themes which were sharp, relevant and related to current social issues and themes. This company has a reputation of both creating provocative theatre and making news. They talk about problems in a blatant, frank and direct way. For European countries these things might seem common and unimpressive. However, for Ukrainian Theatre, this represents a big step forward. For this reason, Wild Theatre might, in certain regards, parallel The Living Theatre for the Ukraine.

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The first generic element shared between these experimental companies is that both of them had no government support or financial founding support. Furthermore, the governments of both countries pro-actively put obstacles in the way of their progress: You realise that the only thing standing between you and work you want to do is the money system. And it is no long before you realise that the entire economy is stifling most of the creative efforts of all men. The work you do in the theatre becomes in all its part an attempt to get men to do away with the whole system (Beck in Marrs 1984: 39).

The Ukrainian system is built in the way that it is impossible or hard for independent theatre companies to use state theatre facilities as the conditions under which they could use the space would be inconvenient and non-refundable. In addition, there is no alternative theatre spaces in which independent theatre companies such as Wild Theatre can perform without any impediment. The vast majority of state theatres in the Ukraine do not stage politically provoking and experimental productions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but at the same time they do not allow the opportunity for other companies do the same, fearing it will cause a decrease in the numbers of audiences. Thus, conservatism and complacency on the part of some Ukrainian theatre practitioners stopped development and killed experimentation in Ukrainian theatre. For this reason, Wild Theatre productions are very flexible and can be presented in various spaces. Additionally, the Living Theatre experienced problems and inconveniences regarding finding a permanent theatre facility base during the course of their production The Brig. After this, Beck stated that The Living Theatre would never go back to the confines of working in a theatre facility on a permanent basis, nor would it return to the production of plays that did not have a political message. Robert Edmond Jones gave advice to both Judith Malina and Julian Beck about creating theatre that would be independent from theatrical space: I wish you had no money at all, because then you can create something. I tell you nothing will come out of the large commercial theatres. You should not go into any theatre. You should have a room, make your sets of scraps of paper, and that way you will be able to drive through and find something (Jones in Marrs 1984: 19).

Another key point is detachment from reality in drama which is presented on the Ukrainian Theatre stage. Frequently, this drama is dated and irrelevant. Modern European and Lyudmyla Honcharova Case Study #4 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Wild Theatre and the establishment of a non-institutionalised theatre company

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Ukrainian drama was left behind till The Revolution of Dignity. Revolution triggered changes in theatre by inspiring to make another attempt to create an Independent Theatre platform. The Wild Theatre repertoire is based on the best contemporary European and Ukrainian dramatic texts. By the same token, The Living Theatre was largely responsible for introducing an American audience to the best European drama. Wild Theatre should become the same motivating factor for Ukrainian play writers and poets. This is based on the assumption that national contemporary drama will develop only when there can be a systematic depiction and understanding of reality of one’s own country. As a matter of fact, in both theatre systems, there was originally a gap between acute drama and theatre: “Drama where the invisible becomes visible, where ideas are translated into correct images of reality, where the problem is expressed in flesh and blood, where anguish is a living presence, an impressive witness” (Bigsby-Brown 1967: 7). Theatre is a social and political battlefield and its significance cannot be overlooked. Julian Beck said that “The theatre is the wooden horse by which we can take the town’. In addition, The Living Theatre have rejected traditional theatre on the grounds they perceive it as fake, and convinced that honesty in the theatre could effect a change in people and that those who were transformed could change the political structure and ultimately improve life. The Wild Theatre company adopts exactly the same aims, trying to effect change in their audience and transform the stage from a battlefield. To this end, they make their audience aware of the danger of the current political situation and that people need to adopt an active position in life. For example, Iphigenia – The Terrorist’s Bride is one of the Wild Theatre’s most provocative, relevant and political oriented productions. Themes raised include globalisation, worldwide terrorism, the identity of the Ukrainian nationality and the place of the Ukraine in the worldwide arena. After the performance, the audience people started questioning themselves about themes that were brought up and began to revise their way of thinking. However, the fact that independent theatres have no financial support has been having a direct influence on its price rates, making it more expensive to attend performances by pushing up prices, therefore making the experience less accessible for the majority of people. As a result, ticket prices for performances are higher than in state theatres and cannot be afforded by the lower and middle classes.

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Again, one solution here might be to follow the example of Living Theatre who were highly perceptive in inferring that it was not the middle class that would lead the revolution – since they have plenty to eat – instead, it was the poor and the young generation who must be reached. In the Ukraine, the situation is slightly different as it is hard to distinguish between the poor and middle classes as they virtually share the same low level of living conditions. Bear in mind, it is common for former Soviet countries to classify people as either ‘poor’ or ‘rich’ - since the concept of the existence of a middle class is entirely absent. With reference to the Revolution of Dignity, it must be borne in mind that the majority of creators and participants of revolution have all largely been younger people and/or with a low level of living conditions and young generation. Ultimately, Living Theatre found the solution how to reach poor and young people: “The poor could not go to the theatre, so it was for the theatre to go to the streets. Only on the streets could the theatre bring about the non-violent anarchistic revolution” (Beck in Marrs 1984: 146). However, to arrive at the conclusion that revolution can be non-violent is hard, especially in Ukrainian society – because not using violence from one side cannot prevent the violence being adopted by the opposite side. Wild Theatre needs to get closer to people who cannot afford to buy tickets for their performances by supporting the idea that theatre should go to the streets – ideally on a daily basis. In short, people should not wait until for the peak of unsatisfactory, economic and social crisis is reached. In this way, possibly a non-violent, anarchistic revolution can be brought about crucially via theatre – particularly, the kind of theatre that Julian Beck and Judith Malina believe in: “Life, revolution and theatre are words for the same thing: an unconditional NO to present society” (Beck in Marrs 1984: 7). Another level of some Living Theatre productions is audience participation – although the same cannot be said about Wild Theatre as yet. This element was particularly apparent in Living Theatre’s production of Paradise Now. During performances, spectators were forced by performers to make a significant choice. This is an option which the creators of Wild Theatre should possibly take into consideration to generate reactions and to inspire audiences to make posiive changes in society. This is borne out by Beck who maintains that, only with audience participation can the spectator be taken to such an intense level of emotional involvement that he or she would be forced to react. Beck was a firm Lyudmyla Honcharova Case Study #4 – Wild Theatre and the establishment of a non-institutionalised theatre company

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believer in the theory that emotional involvement will result in strong feelings: “When we feel, we will feel the emergence: when we feel the emergence, we will act: when we act, we will change the world” (Beck in Marrs 1984: 139). However, theatre companies need to know their audience inside out in order to trigger this level of emotional involvement. For instance, when performing in Brazil, the Living Theatre company was at the same time collecting data among local people as they wanted to be aware of their specific view of the world and become aware of their needs. How else can theatre reach, influence or touch their audiences’ hearts? Even living and creating in one’s own country does not mean theatre companies can necessarily really know their compatriots and their needs in depth. Theatre creators need to be focusing more on collecting data about their audiences’ interests, needs and worries. One example of such practice in the Ukraine has been demonstrated by independent Ukrainian Theatre practitioner Sashko Brama. At the time of going to print, Brama is currently walking from the western part of Ukraine to the first security checkpoint on the eastern border. His aim is to collect data and to get to know Ukrainians and all their various traditions, needs, interests and problems in order to inform his new theatre project. Hopefully, this theatre project will be helpful to Wild Theatre and other local theatre practitioners in order to better understand Ukrainian audiences better and in more depth.

Bibliography BIGSBY, C.W.E., BROWN, Kenneth (1967), “The Violent Image: The Significance of Kenneth Brown’s The Brig”, Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 8(3), pp.421-430. MARRS, Terrel W. (1984), The Living Theater: History, Theatrics and Politics, Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. NASADYUK, Evgen (2016), “Ukrainian Independent Theater can be competitive”, Ukrainian Truth of Life, 10 June,online, http://life.pravda.com.ua/culture/2016/06/10/213593/view_print/ [Last access: 11 March 2020]. OLIYNYK, Evgenja (2013), “Український театр: без права на експеримент”, Радіо Свобода (Radio svoboda), 23 September, online, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/25100678.html [Last access: 11 March 2020]. RAHMANIN, Sergij (2008), “Andriy Zholdak:Ukrainian culture needs blood to go”, Радіо Свобода (Radio svoboda), 8 March, online, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/1112444.html [Last access: 11 March 2020].

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Rimini Protokoll and the use of digital Freya Treutmann Institute of the Arts Barcelona *****

1. Profile of the company The internationally operating German theatre collective, Rimini Protokoll, is famous for its innovative, multi-faceted approach on research projects via conceptual performance. Its three theatre makers – Daniel Wetzel, Helgard Haug and Stefan Kaegi – started to work together in 2000 at the University of Giessen in Germany at the Department for Applied Theatre Studies (McKechnie 2010: 75). The collective sets out to to create performances that are, most of the time, clearly recognisable as the Rimini Protokoll brand - even though their creative process and use of media and forms is very diverse, in alignment with the “model of productive dissent, of questioning and discussion” (Le Roy 2012: 153) instead of focusing on a “unified voice”. What clearly draws attention to the Rimini Protokoll work is their participatory nature and the overlapping roles of performers, authors, dramaturgs, directors and spectators – plus, also the understanding of a theatre code (2012: 155). In this way, the audience is not only the recipient of a performance, but lives an experience where they become part of the performance itself. This crucial element is enhanced by virtue of the fact that, for project-based and, often, site-specific performances, the collective usually does not work with professional actors, “but with people they call experts of the everyday” (2012: 154). Understanding Rimini Protokoll’s projects as research practice through performance, as a symbiosis between “aesthetic practices and the study of them” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2008: 46), these experts of the everyday might in many cases be compared to a focus group. Freya Treutmann Case Study #5 – Rimini Protokoll and the use of digital

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For example, the audience gets the chance to experience an insight into the lives of these “experts”, being part of a mediated and scripted reality in the framework of the alienation of a performative theatre context. Rimini Protokoll also demonstrates elements of documentary theatre (cf. Le Roy 2012: 153) – but cannot be limited to this genre. In particular, the diverse use of technological media indicates this as they are “a primary factor in the transmission of knowledge […] because means of replication and simulation are used to capture and reproduce what really happened” (2012: 153). Nevertheless, Rimini Protokoll is more interested in exploring how to mediate reality and – as co-creator Haug points out – in the “struggle between theatre and reality” (2012: 155). The collective aims for a theatricalisation of the daily life – working, for example, with forms and structures of conversations and communication that are analogue to reality but become performance because they are mediatised and put into a theatrical context (McKechnie 2010: 75). Apart from the use of digital media – such as video, audio and projection in performative installations – Rimini Protokoll also places a strong focus on developing the potential of the radio play. Haug, during one interview, points out that “[t]he paradox of radio plays is that on the one hand the amount of people you reach outnumbers the audience in a theatre, while on the other hand it is a very personal medium because it allows for very direct address” (Le Roy 2012: 158). Rimini Protokoll operates worldwide, addressing social and political topics in various cultural contexts often directly through its site-specific nature – but also taking advantage of the possibilities of digital (online) media.

2. Examples of performance Deutshland 2 (2002) What happens when voters take the place of the politicians? What happens when politics for once really just are theatre (Rimini Protokoll 2018: online)?

Deutschland 2 was the first

performance of the three co-creators after graduating from university. While the 27th of June, 2002 in the Berlin Reichstag Building a sitting of the German Parliament was happening, Rimini Protokoll created a live copy of the event (2018: online.), simultaneously speaking the words they received via headphones that were spoken in the Reichstag Building, replacing every single

Freya Treutmann Case Study #5 – Rimini Protokoll and the use of digital

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present parliament member with a performer in their location in Bonn. President of the German Bundestag of this time Wolfgang Thierse refused to let the performance take place in the old plenary chamber in Bonn which “triggered a discussion about the freedom of art, the relationship between politics and art and the boundaries of drama and reality” (2018: online.). Hauptversammlung/Annual Stareholders Meeting (2009) Hauptversammlung is one of Rimini Protokoll’s most lavish productions. In this performance the Investor Relations Team of the Stuttgart corporation Daimler became the director, while Rimini Protokoll put in scenery their annual shareholder’s meeting. The collective invited audience members to buy shares in form of theatre tickets which then made them official shareholders and allowed them to take part in the meeting that normally even is not allowed for journalists to attend (Rimini Protokoll 2018: online). They “went and simply watched what normally cannot be watched” (Le Roy 2012: 156). With further, additional actions of Rimini Protokoll – such as creating a programme and organising small discussions in the foyer – the stakeholder meeting became a theatre performance. It was not the intention of the collective to interrupt the meeting itself, only to be present. Anyway interestingly interruptions happened by other people in the audience which made them become actors as well (Rimini Protokoll 2018: online). 50 Aktenkilometer/50 Kilometres of Files (2012). 50 Aktenkilometer is a walk-in radio play where the audience downloads a GPS based app that leads them to different places in Berlin to experience content of old Stasi files brought to presence: “A strange picture-puzzle is created for the users, who have the everyday life familiar to us now in view and original recordings from that time in their ears” (Rimini Protokoll 2018: online). The radio play tries to recreate the mistrust of the Cold War era by giving instructions that arouse suspicion towards locations, using original recordings of people who experienced that time. The project was initiated in 2012 but the radio play can still be downloaded on the website and can take place any time.

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3. Rimini Protokoll as a brand and the use of digital media As pointed out before, the collective achieved to create a name that makes people go to the performances because of a recognisable Rimini Protokoll experience with a unique, often participatory, immersive style. Focusing on site-specific performances – because theatre “can move beyond the designated theatre space to infuse reality with theatricality” (Le Roy 2012: 159) – their performances become “permeable events: not only does the reality of the everyday fill the theatre space, theatricality also leaks into reality” (2012: 156). This on one hand can draw in audience members simply for the effect of experiencing something new, less known, especially in a society that due to media influence becomes more and more interactive, but on the other hand because it also holds the potential of being personally relevant to the individuals. Using the experts of the everyday can create a different emotional connection to an audience member, than can be achieved by interacting with an actor. This is because actors are known to work in the hypothetical “as if”, while – for example – a truck driver in a Rimini Protokoll performance also in real life is a truck driver. Rimini Protokoll “focuses on strategies for both mediating and mediatising actual people and places in an intermedial performance setting” (McKechnie 2010: 75), which works as to create an alienation effect of reality to point out specific problematics. This approach also brings the potential of addressing different target groups. Apart from a community that generally is interested in performance art and theatre, every single project points out a specific reality of a specific group of people that might be interested in a project because of a connection to the people performing, their profession, social or historical circumstances or the location. Rimini Protokoll shaped in a significant way the idea of documentary forms of theatre and research through performance: There is a hybridity between the roles of director, dramaturg, researcher, adaptor and editor in these Theatrerecherche projects, which take impulses from documentary theatre and film practice […]. Performing statistics, staging pro- and con- debates about ongoing issues and at the same time looking into the way decisions are made, Rimini Protokoll has contributed significantly to the

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debate surrounding documentary forms and applications, as well as to new approaches to political theatre (McKechnie 2010: 75).

The collective actively uses different forms of digital media – In many instances, these form part of the creative process itself, but, at the same time, they also support the contribution. The inclusion of live performances – and also of on-demand online content in their repertoire as well as still maintaining a unified Rimini Protokol brand – unmistakably holds the potential of reaching out to the a widely spread audience. A radio play, for example, can be broadcast worldwide – which, in turn, may then lead to the recognition of the brand of and developing an interest in live performances as well. It is significant that the location of Rimini Protokoll should also be taken into account. Even though they work internationally, their main office is located in the HAU Theatre (Hebbel Am Ufer) – an established and renowned venue of Berlin’s “freie Szene”, the well-known independent theatre scene. Being locally connected to this scene and also taking part in different theatre festivals such as Berliner Theatretreffen is helpful to the collective to create an identity that reaches a specific audience. Rimini Protokoll has won prizes, for example, in categories of theatre, political theatre, an audio book and a radio play.

Bibliography BIAL, Henry, ed. (2008) The Performance Studies Reader, London-New York: Routledge. KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT, Barbara (2008), “Performance Studies”, in Henry Bial (ed.), The Performance Studies Reader, London-New York: Routledge, pp. 43–55. LE ROY, Frederik (2012), “Rimini Protokoll’s Theatricalization of Reality”, in Robrecht Vanderbeeken, Christel Stalpaert, David Depestel, and Boris Debackere, Bastard or Playmate? Adapting Theatre, Mutating Media and Contemporary Performing Arts, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 153–160. LEEKER, Martina, SCHIPPER, Imanuel, BEYES, Timon (2017a), “Performativity, performance studies and digital cultures”, in Martina Leeker, Imanuel Schipper, and Timon Beyes (eds.), Performing the Digital, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, pp. 9–18. LEEKER, Martina, SCHIPPER, Imanuel, BEYES, Timon, eds. (2017b), Performing the Digital, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. MCKECHNIE, Kara (2010), “Instance: Rimini Protokoll, Mnemopark (2005)”, in Sarah BayCheng, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender, and Robin Nelson (eds.), Mapping Intermediality in Performance, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 75–82.

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VANDERBEEKEN, Robrecht, STALPAERT, Christel, DEPESTEL, David, DEBACKERE, Boris, eds. (2012), Bastard or Playmate? Adapting Theatre, Mutating Media and Contemporary Performing Arts, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Website Rimini Protokoll , online: www.rimini-protokoll.de [Last access: 31 February 2020].

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Frantic Assembly versus Le Vieux Colombier theatre model Valentina Temussi Liverpool John Moores University *****

1. The company ethos: their background, their needs, their audience The nature of how we came to be has been a massive influence on our drive to make our work accessible. It has informed all our efforts in education and training (Graham-Hoggett 2009: 1).

Frantic Assembly company directors, Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, always point out in their talks, workshops and writings how important it was their own story as a company. Their background has totally influenced their choices both in the educational field and in their artistic one. They built their working strategy on a needs’ analysis for their launch, their strategy to find a voice of their own - but mostly to find an audience responsive and interested for their work. It is highly probable that their very successful trajectory – from a business point of view – is a clear example of how the creation of a personal style in theatre should include the idea of creating an audience. This concept takes us back all the way to the roots of Physical Theatre in theatre history. If we consider the work of Jaques Copeau as the point in time where the very first seed of Physical Theatre was planted, we have to take in consideration how important the audience was for him, right from his very first theatre manifestos. A theatre revolution was impossible and unnecessary for him without an audience education. The mission of the transmission to the audience was at the core of his desire for theatre renovation. To establish a personal relationship with the audience, Frantic Assembly built an education system that, for a time in their story, came even prior to their touring and work Valentina Temussi Case Study #6 – Frantic Assembly versus Le Vieux Colombier theatre model

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presentations. They understood that they were creating a style of work, a style of creating, that had a lot to do with a personal approach to composing. To teach their working system meant to create expectation and a potential audience interested to witness what they had tried in person and something they felt that they could read into because they knew the “secret codes”. The members of the company consolidated on their “discoveries” and worked in a way immediately transmissible to a potential audience. To do so, they engaged in a series of workshops for specific sectors of society. They still adopt this approach to the audience and dedicate part of their work to touring around England giving workshops that have the function of auditioning young actors to create specific performances. Another way of building an audience is to build a higher level of anticipation and expectation for the unexpected. Every performance, therefore, has a surprise element which is called the “pre-show”. Taking the form of an introduction, the “pre-show” is specific to each different performance and undertaken with the purpose of setting up the appropriate atmosphere before the story: In creating a pre-show we felt we achieved two vital factors. One was the claiming of the space. From the moment each audience member entered the auditorium, they were instantly made aware that the space was ours, had been claimed by Frantic. No matter that they were long-serving season ticket holders, used to swinging through those doors twice a month. […] The pre-shows varied from piece to piece but the underlying principle was (and still is) to create the idea that something has already started (Graham-Hoggett 2009: 21).

As a result, and as has been witnessed, the audience goes to the theatre expecting to live a unique experience which they feel creates special and intimate moments between the company and the audience.

2. Building an enterprise The description that Mark Evans gives of Jacques Copeau’s work in his article The French Ensemble Tradition: Jacques Copeau, Michel Saint-Denis and Jacques Lecoq (2013) is incredibly close to the way Frantic Assembly operates: Jacques Copeau (1879-1949), through his work as a critic, through his ensemble theatre companies Le Théâtre du Vieux Colombier and Les Copiaus, and later through the influence of his students and disciples, was to provide one of the most significant and long-lasting challenges to the Valentina Temussi Case Study #6 – Frantic Assembly versus Le Vieux Colombier theatre model

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commercial system dominating theatre in Paris in the early twentieth century. In his work at the Vieux-Colombier in Paris and with Les Copiaus in Burgundy, he developed a model of the theatre ensemble that redefined the notion of the professional actor through its emphasis on continual training, physicality, rhythmic play, improvisation, collaboration and creativity (Evans 2013: 111).

. The members of Frantic Assembly felt a strong commitment to the creation of a company that included, right from the very beginning, capable of finding a functioning system that allows them to dedicate time to rehearsals and communication. As pointed out: “We had decided that our approach to building the company would be all or nothing” (Graham-Hoggett 2009: 2), organising themselves collectively and applying to an Enterprise Allowance scheme meant that they “would not get part-time jobs so that we could concentrate fully on Frantic” (2009: 2). For Frantic Assembly the business of creating a company was a collective enterprise. The ensemble style of their performances corresponds to an ensemble way of conducting the business. Similarly, but at a different moment in time, is the development of the Vieux-Colombier company who spent long periods of time together as an ensemble dedicated solely to is preparing and training for performance. The first of these periods took place before the company’s first season in 1913. The company exclusively lived and worked together for the duration of this “retreat” – an experience that greatly enhanced the ethos of the ensemble. This “retreat” was also driven by the economic necessity to reduce the actors’ living expenses in order to be able to dedicate all their energy to their artistic work.

3. Mentorship The directors of Frantic Assembly recognise how important is for their company’s story to have found from the very beginning a mentor, in their case another company (namely, the Volcano Theatre Company), that encouraged them and promoted their work artistically. This is also why they decided to dedicate part of their educational training to mentoring young artists.

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Bibliography EVANS, Mark (2013), “The French Ensemble Tradition: Jacques Copeau, Michel Saint-Denis and Jacques Lecoq”, in John Britton (ed), Encountering ensemble, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 111-125. GRAHAM, Scott, HOGGETT S. (2009), The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre, London-New York: Routledge.

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Focus

Special Monographic Issue Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe

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How do European theatre creators take the audience into consideration? Raluca Blaga University of Arts Târgu-Mureș *****

1. Introduction Every existing body moves in space and time. If we think about this two mediums, space seems to be the one medium that we can perceive as more concrete. Space appears to be something inseparable from the matter – and we, as human beings, can touch with our senses its objective and universal shape. Through its three dimensional exposure, space reveals the world and its objects and we can set their position, distance, size, shape and length. Using all the above stated properties, a body moves easily in all the world’s spacial dimensions. On the other hand, we almost never perceive time as a solid medium, although it is suchlike space. We can measure its duration using seconds, minutes, days and so on, however one always has to return to something more objective, such as facts, in order to sense its embodied action. Facts speak about actions, phenomenons and events. Turning our gaze towards them, we can touch the body of time. Trying to find a definition of time, I remember one of Tom’s lines in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie: “time is the longest distance between two places” (Williams 1996: 75). This defining equation supports the statements asserted above. In order to be perceived, time turns its head towards something tangible – in this quotation, to space, Time is the longest distance between two places will become our workshop’s main theme.

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A more reduced version of this quotation (the distance between two places) will become the eye glass we will wear in order to talk about the strategies that five European artists use when it comes to establishing the relationship between their artistic products and audience. In order to talk about time, the two places that I will talk to are the scenic space of the performance and the social space of the spectator. The scenic space of a performance, dependent on the theatrical event we refer to, is defined by the sum of two different spaces: the dramatic space of the play (if there is any play that the artists appeal to) and the scenic space that the performance makes use of. More often, these two spaces are never in unison. On the other hand, the social space of the spectator is, usually, very much the same, no matter the performance we are taking into consideration. The social space of the spectator is defined by that place destined to seeing and to absorbing the theatrical event. The bridge that connects these two distinct places is time, as theatre happens here and now. So, we witness coming on stage the theatrical space that unites these two different places. Therefore, the main question that I want to raise is the following: how do theatre directors manage to gather in the same point those two distinct places (that of the performance and of the spectator) in order to give birth to a joint space and time? To be more explicit, I need totake into consideration the spectator’s social time. Before entering the theatre hall, the spectator wears a unique time of their own. Maybe they just decided to come to the theatre or maybe he or she bought the tickets a long time ago. Maybe the spectator comes from work, from home or just had a drink with friends before the performance; maybe he or she thinks about an important job assignment. Maybe the spectator’s mind is still connected to an unfinished talk with a family member, maybe he or she is eager to watch this performance that friends talked so much about or maybe he or she knows nothing about this company and this artistic product. The list of poential examples could go on indefinitely – this is because it is more than clear that each member of the audience brings the here and now, into the theatre hall, and into his or her own social time. I consider that in order for a performance to work, all those that find themselves gathered for the performance, should start their evening from the same point – that long distance existence between two different places should be levelled.

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One way to remove this spacing is to take into consideration the power of time. This is precisely the focus point of a workshop carried out by in Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment), Krzysztof Warlikowski, Rodrigo García, Oliver Frljić and Romeo Castellucci. All of whom use diverse theatrical techniques in order to bring us all in that golden area: the here and now of the performance. While in Târgu-Mureș for the onename project, Roman Pawłowski – assistant of the artistic director of TR Warszawa – held a lecture about the Polish theatre’s mission. During his lecture he stated the following: we (TR Warszawa) don’t serve the audience. This powerful sentence still stays with me. To serve someone implies to be useful, to be assigned with a precise role and a goal. Restaurants, where one goes to, have the precise role and goal to satisfy our hunger needs. Based on their offer we serve ourselves with their products. Almost always we are aware of their offer and, based on our cravings, we pick up a dish or other, dependent on what we know and like. At the same time, to serve might refer to assist someone. In this case, to assist implies patience and joint effort in order to arrive at the same point. This implies a different role than the one restaurants have, as the satisfying of needs is not the main purpose. Such was described the mission of TR Warszawa when Roman Pawłowski talked about the audience needing time in order to serve themselves with René Pollesch’s uncomfortable performances. I’ve mentioned this powerful statement because these five theatre directors we’ll talk about today, seem to be guiding themselves by the same patterns. Another common denominator of these five artists and their performances regards the closed artistic product that they confront us with. The World in Pictures (Forced Entertainment), (A)pollonia (Krzysztof Warlikowski), Agamennone (Rodrigo García), Damned be the Traitor of his Homeland! (Oliver Frljić) and Inferno (Romeo Castellucci) are all insular artistic objects that do not use participatory techniques in order to exist (interaction, direct participation nor do they modify the course of action - to name only a few participatory mechanisms). All these performances are offered to us and our mission as audience is, here and now, to contemplate and absorb with our gaze and with our presence their features. These performances are served to us and, when the evening at the theatre ends, we do not go home with a message in our hands, but rather, our mind’s pockets are “assisted” with questions about us and how we can define ourselves while stepping in the space and time of our world.

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So, to return to the main theme, I would like to tquote Hans-This Lehmann’s definition of theatre: “Theatre means the collectively spent and used up lifetime in the collectively breathed air of that space in which the performing and the spectating take place” (Lehmann 2006: 17). This collectively lifetime that we share in the theatre stall has to be build somehow, as I have mentioned the audience members come to watch a performance and bring with themselves, at this meeting point, their own personal social space and rhythm. How can we us all connect and breathe the time using the same pace, in order for the long distance between those two places to be leveled?

2. The power of a theatrical moment: Tim Etchells & Krzysztof Warlikowski Forced Entertainment was established in 1984, in Sheffield. A group of six artists, Tim Etchells, Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor, decided to place themselves at the margins of the British theatre scene in order to generate a unique and every time diverse theatrical experience. In the very conservative British theatre, a stage dominated by the authors and the respect for the written word, Forced Entertainment generate performances labelled as experimental. The British group attempts with every performance to challenge the classical rules of the stage. Sometimes the stage is expected to entertain, to amuse and enjoy. In Forced Entertainment’s case the part related to diverting the spectator is a forced action. This toughness applied to something meant to relax, translates on stage in a diverse matrix of theatrical elements. They develop their performances using the techniques of devising theatre. The construction of each performance is like a laboratory field: interviews, improvisations, discussions. Tim Etchells wears the role of the artistic director and is the one who polishes the rough material born during rehearsals. The starting point of a performance can be really anything: a film, a song theme, an article read in the paper and so on. Forced Entertainment is generating performances that speak about the world we live in. Such is the case with The World in Pictures, a performance created in 2006. This performance sets to bring on stage the history of the world and mankind. Its point of departure is related to the history of cavemen and its point of arrival is sometime in our contemporary surroundings.

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Comedy, mockery, nostalgia, ideas regarding our short moment in time all these can be found in The World in Pictures. The empty stage at the beginning of the performance fills with anything imaginable, resulting a theatrical space defined by kitsch and lack of order. In all this chaos that governs the stage, one can detach an almost ontological idea: we, as human beings, can not perceive anything but the moment we live in, as the great scale of humanity’s time remains something untouchable. Being aware that the audience members come at the theatre with their own personal pace of time, Forced Entertainment generates with every performance distinct mechanisms so that all of us plunge in the stage’s world from the same direction. All of these techniques revolve around the power of a moment. As Tim Etchells states, their goal with each performance is “to measure the moment. Let this moment be empty. Let it be full. Let it be nervous. Funny. Confident. Problematic. Let the moment be nothing. Everything. Let it be all the possibilities of the moment” (Etchells 2001: online). This algorithm also applies to The World in Pictures. At the beginning of the performance: an empty stage; all the actors in the cast are here. They encourage and give advice to Jerry Killick, who leads onthe opening monologue. Alone on the bare stage, Jerry begins his 20 minutes talk appealing to the audience’s imagination; his monologue, in part dull, in part entertaining, tells the story of someone wondering the streets of a town until reaching the top of an apartment building. There, that someone, confronted with the height of the building, imagines his own death. Such a long and uncomfortable monologue creates dullness, fidgeting, maybe attention. Once ended it seems not to be related with the rest of the performance. However, its purpose was to set in the minds of everyone in the public the idea of our own death. This is the departing tone of the performance. Such a technique and such a long theatrical moment was meant to gather us all in the here and now of the show’s scenical time and place. From now on, if we let ourselves in that state of contemplating and absorbing the artistic product entitled The World in Pictures, we will go across different moments, measured, as Tim Etchells stated, with different degrees of entertainment: emptiness, fulness, nervousness, amusement, nothingness, “everythingness”. Krzysztof Warlikowski also exploits the power of a theatrical moment. Warlikowski, together with Grzegorz Jarzyna, marked the Polish theatre stage of the 1990s. After 1989 historical moment, the Polish theatre stage faced with the lack of audience and the impossibility of adapting to the new realities of those successful theatre directors that dominated the stage during Communism. Students of the renown Krystian Lupa, Warlikowski and Jarzyna’s names Raluca Blaga Focus #1 – How do European theatre creators take the audience into consideration?

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were linked at that time with TR Warszawa. Their theatrical voice managed to build up new audiences and to speak to the younger generations. Their theatrical formulas seemed fresh, actual and contemporary as they managed to fill their performances with taboo subjects and images never on stage before them. Now, Krzysztof Warlikowski is the artistic director of Nowy Teatr, an institution that came alive in 2008, having the financial support of the Warsaw’s mayor of that time. Nowy Teatr is set in a neighborhood now very posh (Mokotów) and, as one passes the building apartments, cafés and restaurants to get there, one senses that being so in the heart of a neighborhood, Nowy Teatr addresses a special community. It has its own ensemble, mostly compounded by Warlikowski’s collaborators. Over time, Nowy Teatr became a cultural centre. The first performance built for this new venue was (A)pollonia, precisely our focus for this meeting, a performance that opened in the late spring of 2009. (A)pollonia is emblematic for Krzysztof Warlikowski’s theatrical endeavour. In a talk with Piotr Gruszczyński, a closed collaborator of the director, Warlikowski states the duties of the spectator when he or she comes to watch his performances: “He or she has responsibilities – to forego cell phones, listen to the words and – after the performance, to think” (Gruszczyński, 2010: 59). In order to make such claims, Warlikowski is aware that he has to construct a theatrical space that gathers in the same point and atmosphere all the members in the audience. That is why his performances start and end in slow motion, with a calm tone, something like not to be aware that a performance is about to begin. This is precisely what happens in (A)pollonia, a four and a half hours long performance, that debuts with an hour concert performed by Renate Jett. The concert before the performance is intended to install the same pace and a similar situation for everyone in the audience. The concert, while it unfolds, gathers all the energies in the hall in the same direction and also has the mission to give birth to an organic community: the audience and the artistic ensemble together in the here and now of the theatre. Only after living in such a congruent state, we can begin to talk about sacrifice and its collision with the family’s cell. Using as text based material literary products from different times and cultures, mixing texts of Aeschylus, Euripides, Hans Christian Anderson, Jonathan Littel, J.M Coetzee and many others, Warlikowski and the creative team of the performance address uncomfortable questions such as:

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Is it really our own conscious decision to sacrifice for the loved ones such a sacred and sanctified endeavour?

How do the guilty ones justify their reasons?

What role does forgiveness play in this equation?

What is the role of history, and all its mechanisms, in this situation?

In order to touch and feel the body of our own guilt, no matter if we were or not part of this historical moments that the performance refers to, we must be in the right state so that to think about this issues. That is the reason why Warlikowski never forgets to unstretch such intense points. Sometimes he does all this by tearing apart theatrical moments with fragments of a concert. Other times he makes us watch how a character is getting ready for the next scene, helped by the wardrobe lady. In other cases, using props such as a lipstick, he colors in red tones the traces of a murder. (A)pollonia is flooded with techniques as those stated above all having the same mission: to remind us that we are in a theatre hall and that, after consuming intense emotional moments, we must use our reason when thinking or relating to the performance that we witnessed.

3. Breaking in: Oliver Frljić & Rodrigo García Oliver Frljić is probably the most offcast European theatre director of our time. Festivals that have him as an artistic director abruptly lose financial support, some of his performances do not see the light of the premiere evenings as groups of Catholics and, sometimes, actors react with violence in the face of his artistic subjects and creative working process. Scandals seem to gather around him all over the places, as conflict is one of the techniques he uses to generate theatrical material. Being born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, studying in Zagreb and coming on the theatre stage from the door of the performance art, Oliver Frljić’s social and cultural background imprints in every of his performance. As he uses at least two opposing forces to talk about each subjects, he leans on political matters are often the lenses he applies to approach plays and themes. Be it Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Damned be the Traitor of His Homeland! politics, always a sensible issue that inflames spirits, is set on the table with almost each of his performances. Oliver Frljić is well aware that a single man can not change an entire spirit, but all this doesn’t

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stop him to bring on stage violent and powerful images that are meant to shock and shake up contemporary sensibilities. That’s the reason why he was labeled as a “theatrical terrorist”. Damned be the Traitor of His Homeland! is a performance produced by Mladinsko Theatre from Ljubljana, in 2010. The performance traveled not only in the countries of former Yugoslavia, but also in other European venues. The performance uses devising theatre methods as its construction mechanism and, embracing Oliver Frljić’s favorite conflict scheme, addresses issues such as the power of theatre to make us aware of the cultural and national differences between those who share the same borders: actors or individuals part of a certain ensemble or nation. The conflicts such as those between Slovenians, Croatians, Serbians are mixed with disputes inside the ensemble of a theatre institution. What’s impressive about the Croatian director’s technique is how he manages to draw together all the audience members so that they connect directly and sharply at the theatrical time and pace. Damned be the Traitor of His Homeland! opens with a very smooth and calm atmosphere: most of the actors in the cast are lying down on the stage floor, performing at different musical instruments an easy-going tune; no voices, just the low music floating on stage. This is the only moment when time seems to stay still on stage. The rest of the performance abounds in songs, played out loud, and also very violent are the sounds of guns used on stage (so loud that Mladinsko Theatre’s officials offered us ear-plugs to use during the performance). The first text-based scene of the performance mixes reality and fiction when constructing the biographies of the actors that come and present themselves to us. This mélange between real and fiction is something Oliver Frljić uses not only to generate a protection over the personal truth of the actor, but it is also a mechanism designed to temper down the violence and the conflict that accumulates on stage. Such a theatrical fabric also contributes at the stage assuming itself as a fiction space or the actor as an entity who works at the margins of reality and truth, but also it serves as a matrix where reason dusts away the theatrical illusion that is about to flood the stage. Making the audience aware of its duties and responsibilities, namely to think critically about the events presented on stage, is precisely the task of Primož Bezjak’s monologue: this direct and violent addressing to the public changes every time the performance is presented. For instance, while at the Sibiu International Festival in 2014, the artistic crew of the performance documented the Romanian political and social realities and the above mentioned monologue was delivered based on such information. Appealing at direct and raw emotions, disturbing props (such loud guns and knives), nakedness of the actors and ripping boldly the stage illusion are all Raluca Blaga Focus #1 – How do European theatre creators take the audience into consideration?

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strategies meant to break in the soul and mind of the audience, and once the shock fades away, remains just time to judge the uncomfortable topics that Oliver Frljić faces us with. There was a time when chairs from the audience landed on stage as a negative reaction to Rodrigo García’s performances. At that time, the Argentinian theatre director and a few collaborators produced performances under the name of La Carnicería Teatro (Butchery Theatre), a company based and founded at the end of the 1980s in Madrid. It was a time when finances where coming from state funds and Rodrigo García managed to develop his theatrical language in the area of experiment. Once this financial abundance ended, García didn’t give up or change his desire for experiment. After being invited for a theatre festival in Greece, with the performance After Sun, the Spanish theatre director saw how the doors of major European festivals opened and he was embraced by the French curators and academics (Delgado- Rebellato 2010: 299-316). Since then, he is commissioned by numerous institutions to create his unique performances and in 2009 he won the Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities. Agamennone is a performance created in 2003 by La Carnicería Teatro in association with Teatro Stabile and Orestiadi di Gibellina. Agamennone talks about how tragic can be felt today, in a world that swims in consumerism. Rodrigo García’s play sees tragedy as part of the industrialized society, directly linked with the quest for money and food. Today, the Spanish director states that tragedy revolves around issues such as AIDS, hunger, dictatorship, atomic bombs. When faced with the image of the seven economical and political powers of the world, the only remaining solution in Rodrigo García’s case is hope. Such a strong political and social attitude might very easily fall into propaganda’s shoes or in those of didactic theatre. However, García bypasses didactic theatre precisely because he intensifies every sign, object or body that steps on the stage. This precise artistic product, Agamennone, uses only mechanisms that break the theatre’s classical codes, icons of today’s popular culture and the body of the actor is employed as a canvas, inscribed with diverse consumerist products. What results on stage is a very clear-cut, critical, which doesn’t support any kind of eco-talk, visceral theatre. That stage is filled not just with all these adjectives and nuances stated above, but it is literally invaded by all the materials that resume our current consumerist age. In Agamennone water, flour, french fries, roast chicken, Italian food, plastic bags, small American flags, small coffins, images about today’s wars and leisure activities, images with politicians, images from the supermarkets and so on invade the stage. All these symbols of our world of today are exhibited on stage, without any commentaries, just the one set out by the play that García wrote for this project. We plunge in this scenic world Raluca Blaga Focus #1 – How do European theatre creators take the audience into consideration?

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suddenly, without any forward notice, as it happens in this performance, when accompanied by the rock music we witness the ‘hell’ of the stage unfold. The spectator has no time to breathe all the images on stage, as more and more pour down onto the audience. The only time destined for taking a mouth of fresh air is when the play text is delivered by one of the actors. The message and everything on the stage is hyperbolised at extreme rates so that, in the end, it fades away. What results is such an intense and overwhelming experience that stays with you long time after the performance ended. The spectator can only react in a very personal and genuine manner. He or she has been instigated and his or her own truth and reality must enter the stage. What surprises me every time I watch Rodrigo García’s performances is the incredible poetry that sparks from all this chaos. The human bodies colliding with all the materials in the fictive reality of the stage, give birth to a poetry that uses the spectator’s emotions and reactions as words are used in poetry to construct images and situations.

4. Speaking directly to the spectator’s encephalon: Romeo Castellucci In 1981 Romeo Castellucci founded together with Chiara Guidi and Claudia Castellucci Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. Their theatre company has a distinct hallmark when one it comes to talking about theatrical realities. With each performance a new language is built forthe stage and – what is more impressive – is the fact that the actual time dedicated to rehearsals resumes to just a few days. As a conceptual artist does, Romeo Castellucci also grounds his theatrical endeavour on the idea, on the concept. The audience has to find a new rhythm for his or her reception channel and recalibrate his or her decoding mechanisms. For Castellucci, everything on the stage has new coordinates: the dramaturgy, the gesture, the presence of the body, the space and the time. “Uncomfortable” or “unfamiliar” might be words one would use for the first time when encountering his theatrical products. On Romeo Castellucci’s stage there almost is never staged a story with intrigue and climax. His work revolves instead around dialogue and based more energies and sensuous experiences. The most elaborate parts of the performances are dedicated to conceiving the theatrical apparatus for the stage (sound design, video design and the arrangement of space).

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In an analysis of his Tragedia Endogonidia project, I have cited the collocation “performative paintings” (Blaga, 2013: 105) in order to describe his works and its new aesthetic properties. One of his statements speaks to the kind of theatrical experiences he designs: “It’s the spectator’s encephalon that is interesting here, not his soul (that comes later)” (Castellucci 2007: 36). Inferno is part of his Divine Comedy project commissioned among other institutions by Festival d’Avignon and constructed for three of the Festival’s venues. I shall refer here just to the first part of this project, that is Inferno. The performance took place at Cour d’honneur of the Popes’ Palace in Avignon. Inferno looks at our most dreadful fears – regardless of whether we are renowned artists, children or random members of the audience. These fears encompass the loss of our dear ones, the sense of tragedy in a society in which individual alienation is a norm, nostalgia for one’s childhood and the loss of innocence. The performance is a summation of numerous images – some are iconic (as in the references to Andy Warhol), while some are extremely powerful (as in the one with a piano in flames). For this performance, as is the case in many others, Castellucci did not use just professional artists, but also non-actors. He himself is the person who comes on stage in at the debut of the performance. Protected by specially designed clothes to protect his body, Romeo Castellucci moves to the centre of the stage, states his name (‘My name is Romeo Castellucci’) puts himself at the mercy of a pack of dogs. By choosing to expose himself in this way, Castellucci offers the audience members a portal through which to enter the performance. The spectators watch how the dogs approach and attack him – and, instantly, their most visceral emotions are set into motion. We, as the audience, know that from this starting point on must place ourselves in the shoes of everybody we see onstage. The scene immediate following, reveals an actor climbing the wall of the Cour d’honneur of the Popes’ Palace. This action is let to unfold in a theatrical time considered by many to last longer than the classical norm. In this way, Castellucci manages to bring every member of the audience in the same place and time, in order to contemplate and absorb his performative paintings. No narratives are used to accompany the images, just short sentences, delivered by the director himself. At the same time, we are offered numerous images, carefully guided by

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enhanced sound designs, that target and lead our encephalon in order to trigger those precise emotions that Romeo Castellucci wishes to elicit. Death seems to lurk in every corner of the stage (above the glass where a group of young children gather in the uniforms worn by paramedics, above the top of the building that a man is climbing) and the words (“stars”, “you”) inscribed on televisions that fall apart once touching the ground remind us that it is on the stage where we face our own personal Inferno. Summing up how to be here and now in the theatre, all five of these European theatre directors – each coming from a different cultural and artistic backgrounds, and each with his unique and special theatrical voice – remind us that the distance between those two places (the scenic space of the performance and the social space of the spectator) is not such a long road. Time is a very powerful weapon. If iexploited on stage, it can contribute to bringing in that collectiveness that Hans-Thies Lehmann talks about – ie: the two entities required in order for theatre to happen: the audience and the theatrical event.

Bibliography BLAGA, Raluca (2013), “Romeo Castellucci’s Eleven Utopias: Tragedia Endogonidia”, Symbolon, volume XIV, no.25, pp. 103-111. CASTELLUCCI, Romeo (2007), The Theatre of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, London-New York: Routledge. GRUSZCZYŃSKI, Piotr (2010), Krzysztof Warlikowski şi Teatrul ca o rană vie, postfaţă: George Banu, traducere din limba franceză: Monica Grădinaru, Bucureşti: Fundaţia Culturală „Camil Petrescu” prin Editura Cheiron. DELGADO, Maria M., REBELLATO, Dan (2010), Contemporary European Theatre Directors, LondonNew York: Routledge. LEHMANN, Hans-Thies (2006), Postdramatic Theatre, translated and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby, London-New York: Routledge. WILLIAMS, Tennessee (1996), The Glass Menagerie, introduction and questions by Maureen Blakesley, Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers. Other source Forced Entertainment/Tim Etchells, First Night/And the thousandth night.../Instructions for forgetting, https://www.kfda.be/en/program/first-night—and-the-thousandth-night---instructions-forforgetting-2.

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An understanding of terminology and the need of a specific glossary Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words (Roland Barthes). Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we’d rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down (Susan Sontag).

The question of terminology is really at the heart of the critical analysis of movement praxis and the choice of terms is central to the identification of styles and genres in the contemporary theatre panorama. The terms used by the different theatre practitioners are in fact also emblems of their very personal visions on theatre practice. Words can express and transmit different practices of creation; they also take different meanings according to the ways of engaging of different theatre practitioners in their vision of theatre. Words take forms and these forms become practices. The choice of terms is ample, but two are crucial for our research because they are at the heart of the history of movement praxis: body and space. Susan Sontag defines words and their use in her her famous spech The Conscience of Words – part of the her posthumous collection of essays and speeches At the Same Time (2007). she begins by weighing the elasticity of language and the way in which words can expand meaning, as much as they can contract it. Sontag’s reflections, in her essay, imply a notion of history, and we would like to follow this example in this research. In theatre, through history, terminology has evolved together with the forms it expresses. With the word ‘forms’, we intend the elements and the way in which in the theatre practice were first of all organised, and then also conceptualised and analysed. Valentina Temussi Focus #2 – An understanding of terminology and the need of a specific glossary

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Adolphe Appia places at the very beginning of his book Music und die Inscenierung a quotation by Friedrich Schiller: “When music reaches its noblest power, it becomes form”. The linguistic issue also becomes a historiographic issue because the question of the roots of different theatre practices and their foundations is complex and implies also the critical analysis applied a posteriori to the different events. The complexity lies in the difficulty of identifying the exact historical coordinates of some theatrical phenomena such as, for example, the birth of physical theatre, but also in the recognition of the conceptual categories within which to place them. In theatre we start seeing an interest in actors’ training and on the actor’s body in connection with the birth and the growing role of the director. What happened in these years, between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, can be analysed and explained in different ways. It depends in fact, as much on the capacity of tracing the successions of events, as on the critical reading of the above. The central role of the director in theatre practice is connected to the transition between one mode of theatre and another. One interesting historiographical question is to recognise the changes in theatre practices that happened because of this transition and, moreover, what are the events by which it has been triggered by it, and to which it is are related to it. In the complex pattern of development of mise en scène throughout the twentieth century there are two major strands: on one side, there is a slow change of the usual concept of directing seen only as an interpretative art at the service of a text. On the other side, there is a shift of emphasis from the theatre conceived primarily as an aesthetic manifestation towards a more socially-motivated conception of theatre’s role. For the purposes of our study it is particularly interesting to look at the events produced by these strands. One of the consequences is the realisation and organisation of the role played by the actors in the performance. A second realisation is the fact that the actors start to take an important place in the creative process of the performance. These two events are connected with the affirmation of the necessity of an actor training and the consequent planning and organisation of it, which lead to the awareness and study of the body and its movements. The unity of the representation that the new directors were always pursuing, was also possible thanks to the role that the actors could play in this new artistic vision. This goes along with a new conception of the theatrical space also in relation to the awareness of

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how the performance should be presented, according to the directors’ vision, and it is perceived by the audience. Constantin Stanislavskij, Gordon Craig, Adolphe Appia, Jacques Copeau, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Vsevolod Mejerchol’d are among those who introduced the role of the director in a radically new vision of theatre - both in its mode of production and in its linguistic, and even ethical, essence. This theatre renovation has the shape or the idealistic aspect of a theatre reinvention. Three elements and aspects are deeply touched by this renovation/reinvention: the organisation of space, the awareness and analysis of the actor’s movements and the relationship with the audience. Theatre practice at this stage and in all its aspects, concerning the artistic and the production part, starts from a vision, which is an idea of theatre that implies a strong sense of unity. This sense of unity is advocated and realised thanks to the new place dedicated to the actor in the practice and in the conceptualisation of the practice. The role of the actor is integral to the concept and the use of the theatrical space. The definition of space starts to include different meanings related to different domains. It combines the stage on which the actors walk whilst performing, the spatial organisation of the actors’ movements to express the ideas of the performance, and the technical elements that can be used to create the visual and the emotional landscape. If we look at the three father figures of the twentieth century – Constantin Stanislavskij, Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig – we can see these different views and uses of space. In his works, Stanislavskij pursues a unitary vision of the performance to which it is necessary to relate all the single components. The central problem and motor for him was the need to prevent the actor from acting in a crystallised way. For him, reality no longer had to be merely a representation of a social environment, at the beginning, however, he assigns to the design of the scene a strictly utilitarian vision. Later, he hopes for the advent of a type of plastic set design, remaining open in his long career to welcome and put into practice new solutions. Interesting in this regard to mention this quote on the black background, where even if he is still working with the illusion of a confined bi-dimensional space, he is also thinking in terms of space as an element that alone can be evocative and creative:

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Just think, we had found a background, which, like a black paper, could give the stage the appearance of having only two dimensions, width and height, for with the presence of the black velvet, which would cover the whole stage, its sides, its ceiling and its floor, the third dimension would disappear entirely and the velvet would pour itself into one plane. On such a tremendous black sheet one could draw in various paints and lights all that the human mind could conceive (Stanislavskij 1996: 490-491).

Appia goes further and was the first to construct a kind of set that separates itself from every previous example. While accepting the assumption of theatre work as a union of all the arts, he rejects the realism of the staging. He radically transforms the principles of traditional scenography, and in contrast with the pictorial naturalism he proposes an ideal abstraction in order to emphasise the rounded contours of the human body and its movements. In this way, the scene gains plasticity, becoming a three-dimensional structure: The challenge is to capture the mobility of life for his own use. Space by itself is like a canvas next to an empty palette. The canvas requires colours – and with regard to life, such colour is movement, which is to say, time (Appia 1993: 126).

Thus, while for Stanislavskij the contact between scene and actor took place through the physical actions inspired by reality and dictated by the intentions inherent in the text, according to Appia, the actors’ movements give the space an ever-developing form and volume. This extends to his thinking around the element of time and how it might be shown in space. Among the greatest technique of Appia is Craig, in line with his strong anti-naturalism, is the representation of a bare scene where the audience can take the role of the creator thanks to their imaginary mental projections. The theatrical space becomes an element that has a fundamental role and a great impact in the choices connected to the staging and analysis of the performance in the creation process. The creative autonomy of the scenic language owes much to the investigations and studies of Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig. Craig advocated for design and space to become integral parts of the dramatic scene. His opinions and ideas around the architectural construction of the space at the service of theatre, and on the possibility and necessity of speaking to the audience’s sensory intelligence are incredibly innovative. They are also ideas that promote a method of executing theatre that seeks to favour the imaginative work of the spectators. These are all concepts destined to be used later on in the second part of 20th century, with different scenography results.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, this new spatial awareness led also to the rethinking of the actor in relation to its place in space and the relationship with his physical movements and displacements. Craig specifically spoke about the connection between space and movements giving priority to the space as the element creating and carrying the meaning, and therefore, dictating also the actors’ movements. Despite Craig’s wish to create a hierarchy in this new theatrical vision, the awareness of the expressive possibilities of the scene combined with the study and organisation of the movements of the actors lead inevitably to the autonomy of the scene. In this way, the scene gains the complexity of a language. The actors’ movement possibilities become a new vocabulary. Thinking and rethinking theatre at the beginning of the 20th century implies also an awareness of the impact of theatre in society. This can be witnessed in the form of various new forms of organisation and production techniques that are coming to use. The organisational aspect takes account of, for the first time,a concern and a consciousness around the training of the actors. This is because this new theatrical vision also incorpoates an awareness of its potential future role in society. This awareness takes the form of an attention to create a nourishing experience – not only for actors but for anyone wanting to participate in actor training for different reasons. Also for everyone watching a performance. This kind of awareness is very clear in the work of Jacques Copeau: Copeau’s emphasis on the physical training of actors was thus an integral part of his mission to rejuvenate the theatre. It was also thoroughly modern in that it was in line with the contemporary public interest in physical culture, movement analysis, expressive gymnastics and modern dance. Yet at the same time, the extent to which attitudes to the body and its physical education had changed rapidly over the early decades of the twentieth century, reflected a deep concern over the ways in which modern life was increasingly alienating people from nature, and from a more ‘natural’ and organic engagement with their physical life (Evans 2017: 63).

And again, this ethical approach starts from a rethinking of the theatrical terms and forms, and implies a change in the organisation of the theatre performance itself. “Space” for instance, becomes the place where the performance and the audience can meet. The idea behind it is important, is the research for an organic theatre experience where organic means both the need for the unification of all the parts involved in the creative process, and also the connection with its natural source.

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The natural source is the relationship with to the nature of the human, as apparent both in the performance itself and in the creative process. One example of this is Copeau’s training system for actors. Copeau was particularly interested in helping actors develop their own creativity, to be as “natural” as possible. This for him meant to be connected to the organic laws of nature. This way of intending theatre aims at bringing those who do theatre and those who witness the performance in a communicative atmosphere where the assembly of spectators becomes a community. This communicative commitment should be present also in the work of the actors who, through their training process, should have gained an awareness of themselves, as well as the other actors on stage, in connection to their role of transmission to the audience. A recurrent theme in theatre at the time wsa to find the capacity of representing a play with a strong sense of unity through an ensemble work that included also the use of technical elements like scenography, lighting and costumes. The ultimate goal was for theatre to become an art form that could effect a powerful influence on the audience via the process of a work of reunification, aligning every single element of the performance into a common rhythm. To this end, it has been fundamental – within every aspect of the work – to recognise and draw attention to the materiality of the scene.

Bibliography APPIA, Adolphe (1993), Texts on Theatre, London-New York: Routledge. BARTHES, Roland (1978), A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, New York: Hill and Wang. EVANS, Mark (2006), Jacques Copeau, London-New York: Routledge. SONTAG, Susan (2007), At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches, edited by Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump, New York: Farrar, Starus and Giroux, STANISLAVSKIJ, Constantin (1996), My Life in Art, London-New York: Routledge.

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Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords Traian Penciuc University of Arts Târgu-Mureș *****

1. Scope The enquiry and evaluation was focused of the artistic module continued in the creation and production of the performances aiming to emphasize the co-creative dimension of a diverse artistic group and its potentiality to add intercultural value to creation. The enquiry is related and internally evaluating the Inside Out – Positioning Non-Institutionalised Theatre Practices in a Critical Journalistic and Business Context art incubator organised and delivered by University of Arts in Târgu-Mureș which is focused on the “added value of interculturality” and containing: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Different artistic practices, approaches, creative processes and methodologies of co-creation. Exchange of knowledge, skills and experiences among local, regional and international participants on subjects of artistic excellence and audience development. Working with different focus groups such as students and university staff. Preparation and work on shorter project ideas in co-creation with international, regional and local artists. Work-in-progress presentations for local audiences, media and relevant local and national 1 cultural policy makers and stakeholders.

“Lab 3”, Make a Move Project, makeamoveproject.eu/art-incubator/lab-3/ [Last access: 18 January 2020]. Traian Penciuc Focus #3 – Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords

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2. The groups The group is formed by ten UE residential artists2 and ten local artists from Romania3. Its composition is very diverse: the residential artists come from France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Ireland, Austria and Poland. More than that some of them have come to EU from other cultural and theatrical spaces like Brazil, Argentina and Russia. Romanian artist have Romanian but also Hungarian nationality. Besides the local cultural background there is also an experience variety: renowned artists work together with BA and MA students.

3. The productions The artists grouped and realized six performances. The cast of the performances are diverse in componence and numbers. Many artists contributed to more than one performance. The performances are:

I can’t talk/Nu pot vorbi/Nem tudok beszélni Soap opera in public spaces, based on Demons by F. Dostojevski. Performed by Barko Judit Reka, Anne Corté, Kovacs Irisz, László Otília, Marka Anette, IoanAntoniu Nica, Püspöki Adél, Dmitri Rekatchevski, James Riordan. Concept by Janaina Tupan, Johannes Schrettle. The beginning of a choreographic soap opera in European public spaces. Loosely based on the Dostojevski’s “demons”, the plot tells the story of the descent of a European city, triggered by the sinister activities of a mysterious new political movement.

See their bios on “Resident Artists and Collectives”, Make a Move Project, makeamoveproject.eu/resident-artists-andcollectives/ [Last access: 18 January 2020]. 3 See their bios on “Târgu-Mureș – Local & Regional Artists”, Make a Move Project, makeamoveproject.eu/targumures-local-regional-artists/ [Last access: 18 January 2020]. 2

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The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking Sound explorations. Devised by Maria Gil, James Riordan and Zselyke Kenéz Aletta. Performed by James Riordan, Zselyke Kenéz Aletta, Ivana Peranić, Dimitri Rekatcevics, and Anne Corté. It is a collaborative exploration whose starting point was the role of the arms in the walking process. We start from this very simple movement to explore ideas of listening, breathing, individual/collective relationship and healing processes.

Minor Chefs Something’s cookin’ in Transylvania... Performed by Rodrigo Pardo and Sanna Toivanen. Production by Püspöki Adél. Collaboration by Paula Dalea, Nicoleta Butnaru, Zselyke Kenéz Aletta, Otília László, Kovacs Irisz, Adrian-Iustinian Rus (musical consultant).

The added value of mime for intercultural conflicts Can classical pantomime help us to conceive some complex moments of our contemporary times? Performed by Dimitri Rekatcevics, Ivana Peranić, Marka Anette, Razvan Târnovan, Anne Corté. Through looking at the recent interethnic conflicts in our regions, we will savour together the peaceful moment we are in.

Clouds Passing By Facilitated by Julianna Bloodgood. Ensemble with Kenéz Aletta Zselyke, Püspöki Adél, Delia Dușa, Barkó Judit Réka, Pálffy Zsófi, Răzvan Târnovan, Lászlo Otília. Clouds Passing By is a living breathing installation of personal and collective mythology. A place where body memory can live and individuals can meet.

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Perspectives A sound piece. Original idea and direction by Nicole Pschetz. Texts written by Anette Marka, Kovacs Irisz, László Otília, Raluca Sarca, Talán Vanda, Varga Tomás. Voices by Püspöki Adél, Delia Duşa, Ioan-Antoniu Nica, Kovacs Irisz, Janaina Tupan, Maria Gil, László Otília. Voices recorded at UAT Târgu-Mureş Editing by Nicole Pschetz. Technical support by Joseph Jaouen This piece is based on sharing and exchanging. These stories you will hear today have been written in this city. They will travel and will be continued by someone else in another country. They might be transformed or might inspire new stories.

4. Data collected from the questionnaires Q1. Which from the seven themes (keywords) concluded in the discussions led by Patkó Éva did you find more important from a personal artistic perspective? □

Home

□

Healing

□

Stereotypes

□

Background

□

Tradition

□

Collective memory

□

Otherness

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Results Collective Home Nicole Pschetz

Stereotypes

Tradition

Otherness

Healing

Background

memory

Anne Corté Rodrigo Pardo Janaina Tupan James

1 1

Riordan

Sanna Karolina

Toivanen Dmitri

Rekatchevski Julianna Bloodgood

Maria Gil

Johannes

1 1

Lederhaas

Delia Dușa

1 1

Marka Anette

Pálffy Zsófia

Total

1 4

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Comments: Anne Corté: I don’t really rely on keywords, I think what feeds most of our work is the understanding of the Hungarian/Romanian kind of relationship through the conversations with students and local artists. [She will change her mind, see q. 5] Rodrigo Pardo: There is no way for me to rate these different subjects, they are just different subjects and points of interest James Riordan: I was interested in the healing properties of the Bells and the release given to participant and audience members in the repetitious swinging and ringing of the bells along with the healing qualities of the sound. Individually I was interested in Otherness and Tradition also and explored this more in the focus group. Sanna Karolina Toivanen: I was influenced and touched by the themes of home and otherness during the focus group but this is why I also distanced myself from these themes because they were so emotional and I felt like in this short time I couldn’t touch these themes, but for sure they will continue with me. I felt like instead of diving deep into these themes I would rather talk about the themes in a comic way, because it is a strong way to talk about even difficult themes, and also to talk about the themes from my own experience here in Romania, from my point of view as an artists (instead of “using” the students stories as if they were mine). Dmitri Rekatchevski: C’est plus en rapport avec les projets sur lesquels je pense actuellement. Julianna Bloodgood: Actually, I used all of them because my piece was very much about identity. Personal and collective identity and we included all of these keywords in our process as the work was based on personal stories, memories and ancestors and that covers Home, Tradition, Background. Because we looked straight at the participants lives the theme of Otherness also came up. I don’t think we directly worked with Stereotypes. Healing became a by-product of the process and several participants told me of what particularly felt “healed” to them. Johannes Lederhaas: I think, many of the terms refer to more or less the same thing, but “Healing” carries for me more a positive idea that embraces the notion that artistic processes can not only reflect and criticise on society, but also give a glimpse of hope and healing, which I find more and more important in these times.

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Marka Anette: Healing, because I think it is important to find what we need to express and also what is needed to be received. We need to heal ourselves as an artists and the people around us Pálffy Zsófia: I find it really important as a local artist to use the conditions that we are living in as a resource for creation. We really need to reflect on everything around us and as a Hungarian from Romania I feel like I am in a special position - though I didn’t realize this before. I spent some time abroad which added up to this feeling of appreciating the circumstances and intercultural environment that I am coming from. I tended to feel weak because of being a member of a minority but now I know that this could be a legitimate mission: to express myself through this aspect of myself which is a strength rather than a weakness. I really want to redefine and reframe my perception of home, of tradition and collective memory – the latter mostly because of the defining event of the Hungarian and Romanian community, the Black March in 1990, when we were fighting against each other by virtue of being of who we are. I find this event still unspoken and I can still feel the blockages between the two nations that we don’t want to talk about. This is why this whole project is really important for this community: we need different, outsider perspectives in order to be able to finally talk about our collective memories and heal from the past. Q2. Which from these seven themes (keywords) do you consider shaped the creative process of the performances? Please fill the following table, only for the performances you were involved in, writing “m” if you consider that is the main or defining theme (subject) of the performance, “o” if you remarked it appearing occasionally or/and “p” if you feel it personally influenced your creative process in that production.

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Theme

Home

Stereotypes

m 4o

m o

126

Tradition

Otherness

3m 3o

Healing

Collective memory

Performance I can’t talk The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking

Minor Chefs The added value of mime for intercultural conflicts Clouds Passing By

p m 2o 2m o

o p 3m

o p 4o

2m 2o

m 2o p

m 4o

m o p

3m o

2m p

m 4o

m o p

2o p 3m o m 2o

Perspectives 2p

Comments Anne Corté: Now I realized that these keywords were presents in all processes. Johannes Lederhaas [about I can’t talk]: In a way, all the topics apply to the performance, but since the Târgu-Mureș chapter was a special part of the work, that was dedicated to the research on this very city, I would put “home” as main topic for this work. Rodrigo Pardo [about Minor Chefs]: Cooking traditions are interesting for me at this moment and the performance was a good excuse to find out some details about this subject related to Romania and Hungarian tastes. James Riordan: I found all performances spoke to different themes and the mix of approaches was inspiring. Clouds Passing By I found particularly striking in themes. Pálffy Zsófia: I cannot properly detect the elements of this chart. I was involved in the Clouds Passing By exclusively, and I found all the themes were personally influencing me, with a stronger accent on home, tradition, collective memory. I guess these three topics were the main defining ones at the same time. Traian Penciuc Focus #3 – Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords

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Sanna Karolina Toivanen [about Minor Chefs]: I was influenced and touched by the themes of home and otherness during the focus group but this is why I also distanced myself from these themes because they were so emotional and I felt like in this short time I couldn’t touch these themes but for sure they will continue with me. I felt like instead of diving deep into these themes I would rather talk about the themes in a comic way, because it is a strong way to talk about even difficult themes, and also to talk about the themes from my own experience here in Romania, from my point of view as an artists (instead of “using” the students stories as if they were mine). Q3. Please describe the process for extracting stories used in your group during the focus group with Romanian and Hungarian students, on 11th December – morning. What was your contribution? Nicole Pschetz: I have shared with them a selection of photos of Târgu Mureş and invited them to follow a few guidelines in order to write fictional stories. Anne Corté: I chose an open conversation that I led with several questions about how people feel to belong or not to a community/region/country. Rodrigo Pardo: The group accorded the common subjects and I was leading the physical warmup that helped a soft immersion into the vocal exercises Janaina Tupan: We did games, asking them to mime characteristics of their culture, then drawing on the wall. In a second part, we did a work in couples using the words that had come up in the first part in order to build a choreographic dialogue. I would consider my contribution in leading them to express their contrasted feelings with their bodies, creating a more poetical approach of the matter. James Riordan: I was interested in extracting popular culture stories as a way into how the students viewed their surroundings. We spoke about stereotypes and symbols from the inside of the country, from the outside and in simple movements. We also explored scandals that were known throughout Romania. I was the lead artist in exploring all these avenues. In the second half we explored in duets what otherness can mean in movement, led by another artist. Sanna Karolina Toivanen: It was a very beautiful and important encounter with the students and the locals and I really enjoyed it. However I felt like I couldn’t use their stories for Traian Penciuc Focus #3 – Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords

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my own creation so much but I could use what it made me feel or think about the themes and use this for my creation. I offered a warm up for the body and to connect with the space in which we were working on and to each other. Then I offered a guided visualization exercise and after that we shared our experience and stories which was very beautiful and I was very grateful for this. Dmitri Rekatchevski: J’ai filmé les interview avec mon ordinateur, et Maria les enregistré sur le dictaphone. On a demandé des participants de raconter des histoires en s’inspirant des son de clochettes, qu’est-ce que cela leur évoquait, à quoi cela leur fait penser? Julianna Bloodgood: We used writing prompts, meaning the first sentence is given as a prompt for beginning and one is asked to write from three minutes without filtering oneself. We used prompts such as the Hero of my family is… And the Black Sheep of my family is… We shared our stories and wrote down keywords that inspired us. We also worked with traditional songs that had personal connection to the participant. These songs also had stories attached to them. It was interesting because I didn’t ask the participants to share the story of their song but they all wanted to and so we heard very touching memories of specific moments. Maria Gil: It was a great session. We devised an exercise from the bells so students could sharing their stories regarding bells. Johannes Lederhaas: I developed an exercise of 10 writing tasks that in total would result in a fragment of an imaginary piece of art. Delia Dușa: We started with a movement exercise in which we could know each other by having non-verbal interactions which was the way we wanted to create a safe and open space. Then we had a writing exercise based on collective memory in which we created some standard-sentences which the participants had to fill in with their own experiences. The last part of our focus-group activity was about personal songs which come in our minds from our childhood. There could be traditional songs, lullabies etc. but should be related to a member of our families. My contribution was helping with ideas for what our focus-group documentation should be about. Marka Anette: I was in the writing group. We did some writing exercises with the students. I came with this exercise: when I said the word, they had to start to write without stopping until I said STOP. The word was HOME. I enjoyed the experience, because I participated in the other exercises with my group mates. For example, Traian Penciuc Focus #3 – Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords

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Nicole told us to find a picture which inspires us and to write a letter or a text. The pictures were made by herself. Johannes came with an interesting exercise also. He made little books made of two A4 papers in which he asked us to write our answers. In the end, this culminated in each of having a different story written by each of us. Pálffy Zsófia: We were applying to storytelling of the participants extracting their personal stories with the technique of free writing. My personal contribution was bringing up the concrete questions which were referring to their family backgrounds and collective memories. The second part of our investigation was making people sing their songs, which they would come up at the moment, linked somewhat to their childhood/family. Q4. What creative elements (stories, memories, emotions, songs, etc.) which emerged during the 11th December morning focus group did you recognise in the final six performances. Please answer as detailed as possible. Nicole Pschetz: Emotions in The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking . Emotions, stories and songs in the performance Clouds Passing By. Emotions, stories in the sound piece Perspectives. Anne Corté: I was really touched by a Hungarian local artist story on her experience of ice skating. She explained us how she has been suffering of discrimination several times cause of her Hungarian name and ethnic appartenance. Rodrigo Pardo: Minor Chefs was shaped by folkloric songs and traditional recipes gathered with the local participants, Sadly, because this performance went at the beginning and the end of the night it was not possible for me to see all the other works. I recognized that Clouds Passing By and Perspectives were directly fed by local stories, real or fictional, while the Mime, Bells and I can’t talk groups had a structure not that dependent on the local information gathered on the lab, even when it was inspired by it. Janaina Tupan: Tradition, healing, home, identity conflict, background. James Riordan: I moved into a different group with a different theme, using the bells so the information we had extracted didn’t become as relevant to the final piece. Traian Penciuc Focus #3 – Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords

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Sanna Karolina Toivanen: I recognize stories that were told in many ways (video, writing). Also recipes, personal experiences and stereotypes, background (cake), history (mime), songs, even Romanian music (songs and cake), etc. Almost all the themes appeared in many ways, some more deep and personal and some more from our (international) point of view. Dmitri Rekatchevski: Les histoires racontées pendant le stage de 11 décembre, ainsi toutes les conversation avec des artistes locaux et le séminaire sur l’histoire de Târgu-Mureș nous a poussé a raconter les conflits qui nous avons vécus dans nos pays respectif: URSS et Yougoslavie. Julianna Bloodgood: We used stories that emerged. We found new songs for the presentation. We also found more memories and stories with the new participants, plus poems and lyrics with symbolic meaning. And this subject matter has deep emotions that began during the focus group and only carried on and deepened for the performance. Maria Gil: Every performer’s personal story and the object – bells. Johannes Lederhaas: many stories from the writing exercises. A song. Some step with the bells. some mome-movements. A discourse about issues in this city, such as the bilingual situation, the fertilizer factory or the status of religion in Romanian society. Delia Dușa: I noticed in all six performances that there was used a common creative theme: stories. Every team worked with finding, creating or remembering personal or other’s stories. Based on this theme, all the groups used the other elements (memories, emotions, songs etc.) to build the performances and I think that without these elements, the stories couldn’t be illustrated, even if there was a verbal or a non-verbal performance. Marka Anette: I recognized the stories that were written by us and the students when we had the meeting with them. They appeared in Nicole’s voice presentation. Pálffy Zsófia: Some part of the storytelling and free writing exercise actually became part of the show. The research we did on the student with song also triggered the idea of implementing live sang songs during the show (we didn’t use those of the student’s though).

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Q5. How would you describe the theatre-making method of the productions you were involved in? (Please mention the title.) □

staging a script.

□

devising lead by a director.

□

collective devising.

□

recording/filming and post production.

□

other (please mention it).

Results

Theme

staging a

devising lead

collective

recording/

other (pleas

script

by a director

devising

filming and

mention it)

Performance

post production

I can’t talk

The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking

Xxx

The added value of mime

(b)

(g)

Minor Chefs Xx

xxx

(d)(e)

for intercultural conflicts

(a)

Clouds Passing By

xx (c)

Perspectives

xx x

(f) X

Comments (a) Anne Corté: [about the added value of mime for intercultural conflicts]: When it was decided to work on ethnic eastern European conflicts, each member of the group researched a war and was in charge of producing a summary. We started staging these as experienced mime artists, Dimitri and Ivana shared with the local artist some technical trainings. Everyone was free to propose their ideas on improvisation sessions and we all

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feedback on what we were producing. As an objective outsider. I was able to tke some important impartial decisions. (b) Johannes Lederhaas: the first step was the construction of a plot and then writing monologues which were then rehearsed and confronted with movement patterns that emerged from the talking body. The results were carried out as little invisible scenes in the public space and filmed with hidden camera. (c) Julianna Bloodgood: It was collective devising in a sense because it was everyone’s stories involved but it was directed from a clear concept and vision of the director. (d) Rodrigo Pardo: The practicality of solving the cooking problem as something very concrete was shaping a big part of the dramatic structure of the piece, the co-creation developed framed into this very concrete parameters. (e) Sanna Karolina Toivanen: Collective devising, In Minor Chefs we worked together from our own point of view of our experience in Romania and during the lab, also interviewing the locals and from their stories, their experiences. Also we collected recipes and stories from the locals and their mothers, got also from the volunteers and also did a lot of research online (recipes etc). (f) Pálffy Zsófia: Collective devising, storytelling/free writing, improvisation. During the work-inprogress we did for finding the form of our presentation Clouds passing by/Vital Space we were mostly working with the tools of the devised theatre-making in the sense that all the elements of the show came from private stories and impressions, reflections of the participants. There were very few fixed points and the material we brought on stage was completely personal and grew spontaneously during the meetings. Julianna was following a step-by-step method, she was always leading us in the moment, adapting to the new things and ideas which were appearing in this vital space we were trying to build during this short time. Her strong but flexible vision and our personal agendas made this process such a safe circumstance that I guess nobody was feeling the stress of completing a task according to a director’s will – we managed to feel present and go with the flow – which I honestly never experienced before as a non-actor. There was something about Juliana’s method which made us simply present and focused. (g) Maria Gil: It was devised by two directors from an external, pre-determined starting point.

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5. Interpretation: themes and keywords framework During the planning of the creative work led by Patkó Éva, the artists were asked to propose some keywords in order to narrow the thematic focuses of the performance into powerful and specific strong and valuable subject areas. Finally, the artists agreed to seven keywords: 1.

Home;

Stereotypes;

Tradition;

Otherness;

Healing;

Background;

Collective memory.

These keywords shaped the next stage which was a focus group aiming to gather inspirational material for the productions. In order to assess the role of this method in the co-creation artistic choices and creative process we interrogate the artists through the questionnaire. One question (no. 4) was about the themes they personally chose or considered more important. Every artist ticked the themes he considered defining and some explained their choices in commentaries. Two artists did not find precise enough to define their preferences. We sum up the numbers of choices for each theme in the last row in the table figuring the artists inclination to the themes (question 4). Collective Total

Home

Stereotypes

Tradition

Otherness

Healing

Background

memory

If one value would be significantly higher than we could infer a major importance for the group. If one value would be significantly low, or lower, than we could infer that the theme has less importance for the group. The results (values between 4 and 6) show no major differences Traian Penciuc Focus #3 – Shaping devised theatre creation with keywords

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between their importance. Choosing the right theme brought an axiological cohesion to the group. The fact that they give the same importance and attention to the themes smoothed the creative decision. The reasons for choosing the themes are heterogeneous and we will present some, which were shared by the artists: 1.

Aesthetic choices. Sanna Karolina Toivanen moved to stereotypes aiming to achieve a comical perspective as a result of her own experience in Romania.

Some adopted or suggested the themes because they were already part of their creative programme. Dmitri Rekatchevski was already thinking along the lines of stereotypes, otherness, and background. Julianna Bloodgood included all (but less stereotypes) of them as part of her performance on identity. Her team processed personal stories, memories and ancestors covering home, tradition, and background. Because we were looking so intensely at the participants’ lives the theme of otherness also came up. Plus healing emerged as a by-product of the process and several participants told her “of what particularly felt ‘healed’ to them”. Johannes Lederhaas integrates them in a larger undefined concept, but healing is a “more a positive idea” by giving hope.

Having a practical creative solution (Maria Gil wanted to explore “the healing properties of the Bells”).

Attraction caused by (re)discovering it. Maria Gil explored Otherness and Tradition in the focus group.

Personal and community needs creation gaining the dimension of self-transforming, self-expressing, or-self healing Marka Anette chooses healing from the need to heel herself and the people around. Pálffy Zsófia wanted to redefine and reframe her perception of home, of tradition and collective memory. She also wanted to speak about issues “still unspoken”, “blockages between the two nations”, hoping that different, outsider perspectives about the communities collective memories can heal from the past.

Exploring but not developing themes in the production: Sanna Karolina Toivanen was influenced and touched by the themes of home and otherness during the focus group, but because she found them very “emotional” and felt production time too

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short for valuable development, she decided to approach these themes in later creations. Another question (no. 8) was about their interactions in the creative process, and the individual questioned have been asked to choose between three items or to give, in their own words, comments regarding their own vision of the creative relationship. The four given possibilities were: 1.

Classic theatre of staging a script;

Devising lead by a stage director:

Collective devising;

Filmic method of editing recorded material.

The answers corroborated in the following list showing the perception of the artists on the staging method: I can’t talk – of course filming and editing, the leaders having worked by some script and devising the scenes. Although some actors feel the freedom of collective devising. The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking – collective devising. Minor Chefs – collective devising. The added value of mime for intercultural conflicts – devising lead by a stage director, but actors felt the freedom of collective devising. Clouds Passing By – was staged by directors devising using ensemble’s improvisations. Perspectives – besides recording, collective devising. The most frequent perception was on being used methods close to devised theatre, collectively created or integrated by an artist who had the role of director or capo comico. The result was an open and permissive working atmosphere which elicited, in a very short time, the highly inventive artistic solutions we saw in the performances. But did the seven themes somehow shape the performances? Even if the creators did not follow them on purpose, did the topics somehow subliminally influence what happenend?

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An answer might be inferred from the feedback to question five. Here the artists were asked to identify the seven themes in the production they were involved in considering three forms. One was identifying the theme as personal influence in the creative process, and we added to only help the artists to identify the other two more objective. They also identified the theme as one only appearing occasionally in the production, and were asked to judge if there were specific themes that shaped the entire performance. One of the outcomes was that artists who declared that they did not deliberately follow any theme on purpose still recognised certain key leitmotifs in their interpretations, demonstrating that there remained an unconscious influence of those keywords. Other conclusions can be drawn observing the distribution in the perception of themes in performances. There are performances where almost all creators share the same themes. The Blue Mountains Are Always Walking is perceived mostly as being imbued by the healing process, Minor Chef is about stereotypes and traditions, The added value of mime for intercultural conflicts though satirising by caricaturising stereotypes speaks about traditions versus otherness, and Perspectives speaks about otherness. On the other hand, there are performances where the themes mix, or ‘integrate in some deeper meaning’ how Johannes Lederhaas says. Here, the artist’s perception is scattered and subjective. In I can’t talk, all themes identified leave some artists finding them only as occasionally apparent, while others assign them give the significance of the main theme. We found the same perception with regard to Clouds Passing By – a fact confirmed by the stage director Julianna Bloodgood.

6. Conclusion Accepted them or subject of the performance which becomes a creative mission. Even not followed strictly or on purpose, it shapes the performance at a conscious or unconscious level. In the pan permissive environment of the collective devising, the theme could act as goal and landmark fostering strong theatrical and artistic choices and an aesthetic and ideatic homogeneity.

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Mapping

Special Monographic Issue Debating Independent and Non-Institutionalised Theatres in Europe

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A selection of European theatre and performance festivals1 Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

The festivals selected in this section have been chosen considering specific parameters: 1.

Coherence with the area of interest of the research and of our target groups;

An active profile of the festivals;

An international profile of the festival and intention of mapping Europe (including extra-EU Countries);

Presence of call for applications, call for artists or other openly declared way of production selection for the programme.

Festivals who are no longer active have been excluded – as well as festivals with no internet pages. Some festivals on this list are very generalist. However – owing to their importance and the fact they have specific sections for independent theatre (physical, mime, street, site-specific etc.) – they have been included. *****

All the info, contact mails and telephone numbers are public on the website of the different festivals. No personal/private nor sensitive contacts/data have been provided (GDPR). 1

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Altofest – International Contemporary Live Arts Naples – Italy Period of the year: June/July www.teatringestazione.com/altofest/altofest/ Contact: +39 320 0304 861, info@altofest.net Core practice: alternative theatre practice, international artists, site-specific theatre, independent theatre, residencies. Ana Desetnica – Street Theatre Festival Ljubljana – Slovenia Period of the year: July www.anamonro.si/steber/ana-desetnica/ Contact: +386 41 723 146, goro.anamonro@gmail.com Core practice: street theatre, site-specific performance, clown, physical theatre, children’s and youth theatre. Berliner FestSpiele – Stückemarkt des Theatretreffens Berlin – Germany Period of the year: February www.berlinerfestspiele.de/stueckemarkt Contact: + 49 30 254 89 200, stueckemarkt@berlinerfestspiele.de Core practice: innovative theatre idioms, competitions, theatre market, journalism and critics, residencies. B-FIT in the Street! – International Street Theatre Festival Bucharest – Romania Period of the year: June/July www.fitsb.ro Contact: + 40 21 795 36 02, email: pr@arcub.ro Core practice: national and international artists, experimentation and new artistic expressions, workshops. Bitef – Belgrade International Theatre Festival Belgrade – Serbia Period of the year: September www.bitef.rs Contact: +381 11 32 49 442 or + 381 69 899 24 00, blagajna@bitef.rs Core practice: latest theatre trends, events in global theatre, experimental forms, avant-garde explorations.

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Brighton Fringe Festival Brighton – United Kingdom Period of the year: May/June www.brightonfringe.com Contact: +44 1273 764 907, takepart@brightonfringe.org Core practice: alternative theatre, independent productions, street theatre, non-mainstream theatre, site-specific performances, dance, music and comedy. Budapest Fringe Festival Budapest – Hungary Period of the year: April www.budapestfringe.com Contact: szervezes@budapestfringe.com or pr@budapestfringe.com Core practice: non-mainstream theatre, dance, music and comedy. Camden Fringe Festival London – United Kingdom Period of the year: July/August www.camdenfringe.com Contact: admin@camdenfringe.org Core practice: alternative and independent theatre, physical theatre, site-specific theatre, improv, small-scale projects. COS Reus – Festival COS Internacional de Moviment i Teatre Gestual Reus – Spain Period of the year: October www.cosreus.cat Contact: festivalcos@reus.cat Core practice: physical theatre, movement, object theatre, mime. Demoludy in New Europe Festival Olsztyn – Poland Period of the year: November/December www.demoludy.art.pl Contact: +48 89 527 59 59 or +48 89 527 59 58, a.stawisinska@wyrazsiebie.org Core practice: international theatre, physical theatre, new writing.

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Dublin Fringe Festival Dublin – Ireland Period of the year: September www.fringefest.com Contact: +353 1 6706106, hello@fringefest.com Core practice: alternative and independent theatre, physical theatre, site-specific theatre, smallscale projects. Dubrovnik Summer Festival Dubrovnik – Croatia Period of the year: July www.dubrovnik-festival.hr/en Contact: +385 20 326 100, info@dubrovnik-festival.hr Core practice: site-specific, tradition and modernity, local, national, and international creativity, intercultural exchange. dunaPart: Hungarian Showcase of Contemporary Performing Arts Budapest, Trafó and other venues – Hungary Period of the year: November (almost biennial – next in 2019) www.dunapart.net Contact: info@dunapart.net Core practice: new works by Hungarian dance and theatre professionals, independent critics of contemporary performing arts. Edinburgh Festival Fringe Edinburgh, United Kingdom Period of the year: August www.edfringe.com Contact: +44 131 226 00 26, participants@edfringe.com Core practice: un-juried performing arts event, cabaret, children’s shows, comedy, dance, physical theatre and circus, events, exhibitions, music, alternative musicals and opera, experimental works. European Festival of Performing Arts – Romanian Drama Festival Timişoara – Romania Period of the year: May www.tntimisoara.com Contact: + 40 256 499 908, tntm.office@timisoara.com Core practice: national and European performance artists, street performances, one-man shows, dance-theatre.

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EUROTHALIA – European Theatre Festival Timişoara – Romania Period of the year: November/December www.eurothalia.ro Contact: +40 256 201 291, secretariat@dstt.ro Core practice: current trends in European theatre, classical theatre, contemporary drama, contemporary dance. FEDU Sarajevo – Bosnia and Herzegovina Period of the year: May www.fedu.ba Contact: +387 61 337-407, ino@fedu.ba Core practice: children’s and youth theatre, puppetry, street theatre, physical theatre, clown. Festival d’Avignon Avignon – France Period of the year: July www.festival-avignon.com Contact: +33 4 90 27 66, festival@festival-avignon.ecom Core practice: visual and performing arts, ensemble theatre work, exchanges and encounters, reinvented classic and modern texts. Festival d’Avignon OFF Avignon – France Period of the year: July www.avignonleoff.com Contact: +33 4 90 85 13 08, agnes@avignonleoff.com or regie@avignonleoff.com or gabrielle@avignonleoff.com Core practice: independent theatre companies, alternative theatre, site-specific performance, street theatre, puppetry, diversity, plural composition. Festival de Almada Almada – Portugal Period of the year: July www.ctalmada.pt Contact: +351 21 273 93 60, geral@ctalmada.pt Core practice: national and international theatre groups, street theatre, dance performances, exhibitions, discussions

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Festival de Marseille Marseille – France Period of the year: May/June www.festivaldemarseille.com Contact: +33 491 99 02 50, info@festivaldemarseille.com Core practice: dance and general performing arts, including physical performance and sitespecific. Festival International de Théâtre de Rue Aurillac – France Period: August www.aurillac.net Contact: +33 4 71 43 43 70, festival@aurillac.net Core practice: European street performances and theatre. Festival Maribor Maribor – Slovenia Period of the year: October www.borstnikovo.si Contact: +386 2 250 62 27 or +386 2 250 61 00, info@borstnikovo.si Core practice: national and international theatre, state/institutional and independent theatre productions. Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes Charleville-Mézières – France Period of the year: September www.festival-marionnette.com Contact: (+33) (0)3 24 59 94 94, festival@marionnette.com Core practice: puppet theatre, creation and research, indoor and outdoor events, site-specific performances. FiraTàrrega Teatre al Carrer Tàrrega – Spain Period of the year: September www.firatarrega.cat Contact: +34 973 310 854, info@firetarrega.com Core practice: street arts and non-conventional venues, different stage disciplines, up-and-coming talents, national and international creative avant-gardes, theatre market.

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Fira Trapezi Reus Reus – Spain Period of the year: May www.trapezi.cat Contact: +34 977 010 651, oficina@trapezi.cat Core practice: circus, site-specific theatre, physical theatre, clowns, aerial theatre, street theatre, theatre market. Fringe Festival Praha Prague – Czech Republic Period of the year: May/June www.praguefringe.com Contact: +420 602 549 008, steve@praguefringe.com Core practice: international artists, alternative theatre, dance, music. Fundamental Monodrama Festival Luxembourg – Luxembourg Period of the year: June www.fundamental.lu/fr/asbl Contact: + 352 691 88 75 12, info@fundamental.lu Core practice: monodrama, theatre and drama, exhibitions and performances in relation to visual arts, performing arts and literature Galway Theatre Festival Galway – Ireland Period: May www.galwaytheatrefestival.com Contact: +353 91 509700, workshopsgtf@gmail.com Core practice: national and international theatre and dance companies, performing arts, music, visual arts, impro, talks. GREC Festival Barcelona, Spain Period: July www.lameva.barcelona.cat/grec/es Contact: Core practice: international artist, physical theatre, site-specific theatre, outdoor and indoor productions.

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Helsinki Festival Helsinki – Finland Period of the year: August/September www.helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi Contact: +358 9 6126 5100, info@helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi Core practice: multi-arts festival, theatre, music, dance, art exhibitions, circus, movies, children’s programs HIGH FEST International Performing Arts Festival Yerevan – Armenia Period of the year: September/October www.highfest.am Contact: +374 10 53 62 33, info@highfest.am Core practice: international and national performing arts, alternative theatre, street and sitespecific performances, puppet theatre, dance, music. Holland Festival – International Podiumkunste Amsterdam Amsterdam – Netherlands Period of the year: June www.hollandfestival.nl Contact: +31 20 788 21 00, info@hollandfestival.nl Core practice: performances and concerts from around the world, established names and new talents, new types of venues and forms of theatre, innovation in art. Imaginarius International Street Theatre Festival Santa Maria da Feira – Portugal Period of the year: May www.imaginarius.pt Contact: +351 256 370 887 Core practice: physical theatre, street performance, mime, clown, circus, workshops. INTERFERENCES International Theatre Festival Cluj – Romania Period of the year: November www.interferences-huntheatre.ro Contact: +40 264 431 986, email: office@huntheatre.ro Core practice: topical editions, theatrical and dance performances, exhibitions, concerts, aftershow talks.

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International Festival of Monodrama and Mime Zemun – Serbia Period of the year: June/July www.festmono-pan.org.rs/en/ Contact: +381 11 269 1715, milovan.zdravkovic@festmono-pan.org.rs Core practice: mime, monodrama, independent theatre. International Istanbul Theatre Festival Istanbul – Turkey Period of the year: November/December tiyatro.iksv.org Contact: +90 212 334 07 77, info@iksv.org Core practice: new topics and works in performing arts, educational programmes, coproductions, social theatre. International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra Nitra – Slovakia Period of the year: September-October www.nitrafest.sk Contact: +421 37 652 4 870 or +421 903 55 44 75, nitrafest@nitrafest.sk Core practice: national and international events, drama/play, dance, music, puppet theatre, visual theatre, non-traditional theatre, innovative scenic theatre, new tendencies. Kilkenny Arts Festival Kilkenny – Ireland Period of the year: August www.kilkennyarts.ie Contact: +353 56 7763663, info@kilkennyarts.ie Core practice: new works, theatre and dance, music, street art, literature, visual arts and craft. Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels – Belgium Period of the year: April/May www.kfda.be Contact: +32 2 226 45 79, charline@kfda.be Core practice: international artists, contemporary theatre, dance, performance, visual arts, workshops.

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La Mostra de Igualada – Children and Youth Theatre Festival Igualada – Spain Period of the year: April www.lamostraigualada.cat Contact: +34 93 806 69 45, info@lamostraigualada.cat Core practice: children theatre, youth theatre, circus, street theatre, puppetry, street theatre, physical theatre. La Strada Theatre Festival Graz – Austria Period of the year: July/August www.lastrada.at Contact: +43 316 69 55 80, info@lastrada.at Core practice: street theatre, site-specific performance, clown, physical theatre, children’s and youth theatre. Le Printemps des Comédiens Montpellier – France Period of the year: June www.printempsdescomediens.com Contact: +33 4 67 63 66 67, printemps@printempsdescomediens.com Core practice: contemporary performing arts, avant-garde, and classic theatre, plastic arts. LIFT – London International Festival of Theatre London – United Kingdom Period of the year: May/July www.liftfestival.com Contact: +44 20 7968 6800, info@liftfestival.com Core practice: global scope, performances, talks, installations and events, intercultural exchange. LÓKAL – International Theatre Festival Reykjavík – Iceland Period of the year: November www.lokal.is Contact: +354 895 6871, lokal@lokal.is Core practice: cutting-edge drama, local and international artists, storytelling, technology and performing arts.

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London International Mime Festival London – United Kingdom Period of the year: January/February www.mimelondon.com Contact: +44 20 7637 5661, anna@annaarthurpr.com Core practice: mime, physical theatre, workshops. LUDI – International Theatre Festival of Chamber and Mono Performances Orel – Russia Period of the year: June www.teatr.orel.ru Contact: +7 4862 764698 or +7 4862 761212, teatrCP@oyandex.ru or lama124@yandex.ru Core practice: various types of performing arts events, multidisciplinary perfromances. Malta International Arts Festival La Valletta – Malta Period of the year: June/July www.festivalsmalta.org Contact: caroline.c.agius@festivalsmalta.org Core practice: physical theatre, micro-theatre production, interdisciplinary productions, independent theatre, street theatre, site-specific performances. Malta International Theatre Festival Poznan – Poland Period of the year June www.malta-festival.pl Contact: +48 61 62 31 866, office@malta-festival.pl Core practice: site-specific theatre and performances, contemporary performing arts, workshops, discussions, experiments, global scope Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival Edinburgh – United Kingdom Period of the year: February www.manipulatefestival.org Contact: +44 131 341 4314, info@puppetanimation.org Core practice: visual theatre, puppet theatre, object theatre, alternative theatre practice.

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Mess Sarajevo Festival Sarajevo – Bosnia and Herzegovina Period of the year: September/October www.mess.ba Contact: +387 33 200 392, info@mess.ba Core practice: local, European and world production, small and experimental theatre works. Mezinarodni Festival Divadlo Pilsen – Czech Republic Period of the year: September www.festivaldivadlo.cz Contact: +420 378 038 414 or +420 378 038 415, festival@divadlo.cz Core practice: national and international productions of drama, music, dance, puppet and street theatre, modern theatre trends in Europe and globally, international collaboration. Milano Clown Festival Milan – Italy Period of the year: March www.milanoclownfestival.com Contact: +39 02 91 70 50 29, info@milanoclownfestival.it Core practice: clown, mime, physical theatre, street theatre. Mime Fest Prague – Czech Republic Period of the year: September www.mimefest.cz Contact: +420 777 002 069 or +420 777 947 430, physicalmime@gmail.com or mimefest@gmail.com Core practice: mime, physical theatre MITEM – Madách International Theatre Meeting Budapest – Hungary Period of the year: April www.mitem.hu/en Contact: +361 476 68 00, melinda.szuts@nemzetiszinhaz.hu or ami.muranyi@nemzetiszinhaz.hu Core practice: independent the theatre, communal experience, post-performance conversations, roundtables, workshops

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Napoli Teatro Festival Naples, Italy Period of the year: June/July www.napoliteatrofestival.it Contact: +39 81 18199179, info@napoliteatrofestival.it Core practice: international, observatory section, physical theatre, workshops, dance. OFF Sytuacje Poznan – Poland Period of the year: May/June www.studio-aktorskie.pl/offsytuacje Contact: akademiapapa@gmail.com Core practice: alternative theatre practice, micro-theatre, solo performance, training, seminars and workshops. Online Performance Art Festival Online Period of the year: December, February, April/May, August (four editions per year) www.onlineperformanceart.com Contact: info@olineperformanceart.com Core practice: alternative theatre practice, micro-theatre, digital theatre, live streaming. Paris Fringe Paris – France Period of the year: October www.parisfringe.org Contact: info@parisfringe.org Core practice: alternative theatre, independent productions, street theatre, non-mainstream theatre, site-specific performances. PASSAGE International Street Theatre Festival Elsinore and Helsinborg – Denmark and Sweden Period of the year: July/August www.passagefestival.nu Contact: +45 53 86 08 11, assagefestival@helsingor-teater.dk Core practice: street theatre, site-specific performance, physical theatre, intercultural exchange.

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PIF – International Puppet Theatre Festival Zagreb – Croatia Period of the year: September www.pif.hr Contact: +385 1 66 01 626 or +385 1 66 92 574 Core practice: puppet exhibitions and shows, national and international performers, adult and children plays, seminars. Porsgrunn International Theatre Festival Porsgrunn – Norway Period of the year: June www.pitfestival.no Contact: +47 35 55 66 88, post@pitfestival.no Core practice: national and international theatre performances, street performances, seminars and workshops Reading Fringe Festival Reading – United Kingdom Period of the year: July www.readingfringefestival.co.uk Contact: info@readingfringefestival.co.uk Core practice: alternative and independent theatre, physical theatre, site-specific theatre, smallscale projects. REFLEX International Theatre Festival Sfântu Gheorghe – Romania Period of the year: May www.reflexfest.ro Contact: +40 267 351 886, office@tamasitheatre.ro Core practice: physical theatre, theatre classics in up-to-date versions, artworks. Reykjavik Art Festival Reykjavik – Iceland Period of the year: June www.artfest.is Contact: +354 561 2444, artfest@artfest.si Core practice: international artists, multidisciplinary works, new commissions, creative intersection of the arts, performances of contemporary works, cultural diversity.

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Roma/Europa Festival Rome – Italy Period of the year: September/November www.romaeuropa.net/festival Contact: +39 06 45553050, email: romaeuropa@romaeuropa.net Core practice: international and local networks, Italian and European performing arts, theatre, visual arts, digital media, dance, contemporary music. Roma Fringe Festival Rome – Italy Period of the year: January www.romafringefestival.it Contact: info@romafringefestival.it Core practice: alternative theatre, independent productions, site-specific performances, nonmainstream theatre. Sibiu International Theatre Festival Sibiu – Romania Period of the year: June www.sibfest.ro Contact: +40 269 210 092, tnrs@sibfest.ro or vicentiu.rahau@sibfest.ro or dan.bartha@sibfest.ro Core practice: local and foreign performance artists, theatre, dance, and music, platform for nonformal education through performing arts, performing arts market. Sirenos Festival Vilnius – Lithuania Period of the year: October www.sirenos.lt Contact: +370 61497424, email: sirenos@sirenos.lt Focus: European theatre artists, modern trends in theatre. SPRING - Festival aan de Werf Utrecht – Netherlands Period of the year: May www.festivalaandewerf.nl Contact: +31 30 231 5844, +31 30 231 5355, info@huisaandewerf.nl Core practice: international companies, recent development in theatre, dance, visual arts, and performative installations indoor and outdoor, alternative venues.

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Step by Step International Theatre Festival Rezekne – Latvia Period of the year: September www.teatris.rezekne.net Contact: +371 646 22066, teatr59@inbox.lv Core practice: national and European theatre groups, different genres and forms. Subotica International Festival of Children’s Theatres Subotica – Serbia Period of the year: September www.lutfestsubotica.net Contact: +381 24 554 600, ivona@openunsubotica.rs or lutfestsubotica@gmail.com Core practice: children’s and youth theatre, puppetry, street theatre, physical theatre, clown. Tampere Theatre Festival Tampere – Finland Period of the year: August www.teatterikesa.fi Contact: +358 3 222 8536, info@teatterikesa.fi Core practice: national and international, professional and amateur theatres, dance theatre, street performances, club and restaurant shows, workshops, seminars, exhibitions and meetings. Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre Tbilisi – Georgia Period of the year: September www.tbilisiinternational.com/en Contact: +995 32 295 59 66, tina@tbilisiinternational.com or nutsa@tbilisiinternational.com or nato@tbilisiinternational.com Core practice: international cultural events, global dramatic and performing arts, cultural cooperation and exchanges Teatr Lalki i Aktora w Łomży Łomża – Poland Period of the year: June www.teatrlomza.hi.pl Contact: +48 86 216 59 55, teatrlomza@hi.pl Core practice: international and national participants, puppet theatre, educational activities, children and youth theatre.

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Thealter International Szeged – Hungary Period of the year: August www.thealter.hu Contact: +36 30 9959229, maszk@maszk.hu Core practice: independent art groups, innovative and non-mainstream theatre. Theatretage am See Festival Friedrichshafen – Germany Period of the year: March/April www.theatretageamsee.de Contact: auffuehrungen@theatretageamsee.de Core practice: children’s and youth theatre, clowns, circus, physical theatre, educational programmes. TESZT – Euroregional Theatre Festival Timişoara Timişoara – Romania Period of the year: May www.teszt.ro Contact: +40 256 434 814, office@tm-t.ro Core practice: national and international companies and artists, contemporary theatre, non-verbal performances, puppets and marionette theatre, experiments and research, collaboration, multiculturalism. TILT Festival Birmingham, United Kingdom Period of the year: July www.tiltfestival.com Contact: +44 121 6430022 Core practice: aerial and physical theatre, national and international circus artists, outdoor and indoor performance, masterclasses, theatre market. Tollwood Winterfestival Munich – Germany Period of the year: November/December www.tollwood.de Contact: +49 89 383 85 00, info@tollwood.de Core practice: international works, performance works, concerts.

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V/A Fest – International Theatre Festival Varna Summer Varna – Bulgaria Period of the year: June www.viafest.org Contact: +359 2 988 44 82, bat@omega.bg or r.nikolova@vaifest.org Core practice: international artists, street theatre, puppetry, workshops. Visual Theatre Fest NuQ Treff Tallinn – Estonia Period of the year: May www.nuku.ee/en/festival Contact: +372 6679 555 or +372 6679 542, leino.rei@nuku.ee or annika@nuku.ee Core practice: interdisciplinary performance, puppet theatre, dance, drama and music concerts, communication for practitioners, meetings and workshops, post-performance talks. Wiener Festwochen Wien – Austria Period of the year: May/June www.festwochen.at Contact: +43 1 589 22 0, festwochen@festwochen.at Core practice: multidisciplinary creations, international artists. Zürcher Festspiele Zurich – Switzerland Period of the year: June www.festspiele-zuerich.ch Contact: +41 44 269 90 90, info@festspiele-zuerich.ch Core practice: general performing arts, cross-sectoral programme, interdisciplinary performances.

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A selection of market events for performing arts Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

Due to the very specific typology of event, this survey will consider a selection of performing arts market at international level and not only in the European context. It is also important to point out that many festival previously selected, even if not organised as a market, has also specific section for buyers, programmers and distributors (e.g. Avignon OFF).

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CINARS International Exchange for Performers (Canada) According to the CINARS’ mission: CINARS is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote and support the export of the performing arts. Its main objectives are to: Encourage cultural creations emerging from the performing arts sector; Promote commercial discussions between organizations specializing in production and those specializing in show presentation; Make Montreal a worldwide hub of performance art networking. Period: biennale www.cinars.org/en/biennale FiraTàrrega FiraTàrreg is the international market for performing arts that takes place every year in Tàrrega during the second weekend in September. Founded in 1981, it is a great showcase of what is going on in performing arts, with an eclectic programme that includes indoor shows and places special emphasis on street arts, visual and unconventional shows. Period: September www.firatarrega.cat

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Internationale Kulturbörse Freiburg (Germany) The IKF is a trade fair and international industry event. Promoters, producers and event professionals have the opportunity at the IKF to experience numerous different productions and artists live in a concentrated form over the course of just a few days. At the same time, the artists themselves or the agencies representing them can introduce themselves with a stand in the exhibition hall, regardless of whether they are also presenting a live performance. It is currently possible to apply to the IKF with live performances in the following categories: Performing arts (theatre, acrobatics, variety, storytelling, cirque nouveau, cabaret, comedy, puppet theatre, pantomime, dance, media art, etc.); music (world music, jazz, a cappella, singer-songwriter, pop, rock…); street theatre (performances and walkabout acts). Period: September www.kulturboerse-freiburg.de La Mostra d’Igualada (Spain) La Mostra d’Igualada is a major showcase for the best productions, attracting around 36,000 spectators and 700 professionals. Considered a strategic Catalan marketplace, its purpose is to strengthen children’s theatre programmes around the country and beyond. From over 600 applications received to take part in the festival, the artistic direction has selected around fifty productions for their quality, contemporaneity, originality and capacity to incorporate new languages and to adapt to unconventional spaces. The event encompasses all performing art genres (theatre, magic, circus arts, clowning, puppetry, dance, music, multi-disciplinary arts, etc.), both in theatres and on the street. Period: April www.lamostraigualada.cat Performing Arts Market Seoul (South Korea) The primary objects of PAMS are revitalization of rational distribution and exportation to oversee markets. Through the diverse programs of PAMS as showcases of selected performing arts, booth exhibitions for the promotion of art works and artistic groups, varied symposium and networking programs, all the performing arts experts are able to share the information of field and global trends for encouragement of creation and provision of performing arts. Period: October www.en.pams.or.kr/ Sibiu Performing Arts Market (Romania) Since its first edition in 1997, the Sibiu Performing Arts Market has developed and has become an important cultural network, facilitating connections between festivals and artists, performing arts, independent companies or public institutions. Every year, more than 300 participants all over the world, representing various cultural organizations (artistic management agencies, NGOs, public institutions, independent companies, etc.), meet in Sibiu and establish connections and possible future partnerships. Armando Rotondi Mapping #2 – A selection of market events for performing arts

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The Sibiu Performing Arts Market – an associated structure of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS) – is the product of the Festival's need to grant equal opportunities to all artists, cultural operators, performing arts institutions or cultural networks to meet important producers from all over the world. Period: June www.sibfest.ro/bursa/bursa-en.html TPAM Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama (Japan) TPAM Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama is a space where professionals from various places in the world who explore the possibility of contemporary performing arts exchange through performance and meeting programs to gain information, inspiration and network for the creation, dissemination and vitalization of performing arts. Established in 1995 as Tokyo Performing Arts Market and moved in 2011 to the “Creative City” Yokohama. Reinforcing its focus on Asia and having started to involve itself in Asian co-production, TPAM is internationally recognized as one of the most influential performing arts platforms in Asia. Period: February www.tpam.or.jp

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A selection of Europe-based companies/artists1 Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

The companies and artists selected in this section have been chosen as examples of possible partners in the field of independent and non-instutionalised theatre practice. The list is a subjective attempt and it does not want to be a complete list. In the selection some parameters has been used in order to exclude some possible institutions. Specifically companies that can be considered as “institutions”, “institutionalized” or critically “canonized” – even if working in the areas of physical theatre or movement-base practice and alternative theatre – have been not considered: it is the case of DV8, Forced Entertainment, Societas Raffaello Sanzio or other companies that have reached big dimensions. Same parameter of exclusion has been used with companies focused more on the commercial aspects (e.g. Circo de los horrores). Companies that have been considered for specific case studies in this report have been also excluded, due to the information already given previously (e.g. Rimini Protokoll). *****

A Estructura (Porto, Portugal) A Estrutura was founded in 2009 by Cátia Pinheiro e José Nunes and has developed the creation and production of performances of theatre and interdisciplinary projects, as well as parallel programming and educational activities. The work of A Estructura focuses on the creation of projects that enter in dialogue with the reality of contemporary thinking (its artistic, philosophical, social and political dimensions), promoting artistic experimentation and a

The following descriptions are faithful reproductions of the information, data and style of the websites of the selected companies and artists. Only few minor changes were made. 1

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collaborative logic, where they regularly invite other artists to share the creative process, such as was the case with Rogério Nuno Costa, Pedro Zegre Penim, António MV or André Godinho. www.estrutura.pt ACTS – Laboratory for performance practices (Oslo, Norway) ACTS – Laboratory for performance practices is an artist-run organization for practical research in the field of contemporary performance. Based in Oslo, Norway, ACTS was founded in 2011, and it is driven by the artistic directors Fernanda Branco and Luanda Carneiro Jacoel. The foundation of ACTS work is on bridging interdisciplinary art forms in Norway, to foment development through the actual exchange between artists from different artistic backgrounds. ACTS focus on local and transnational artists to expand notions of local-global and vice-versa from the perspective of being in long durational transit. Within the contemporary sociopolitical context of increased and accelerated global mobility, ACTS positions itself as a mobile organization that promotes mobility between art forms. ACTS seeks to collaborate with various cultural locations with a temporarily and site-specific approaches to it. www.actspractices.org Andcompany&Co. (Frankfurt, Germany) The collective andcompany&Co. was founded by theatremaker and scientist, author and performer Alexander Karschnia, theatre-maker, author and performer Nicola Nord, and musician, performer and composer Sascha Sulimma. In the spirit of its founding ideas, they create their work collaboratively with all members, co-directing, co-writing and co-producing the pieces. National and international artists from various disciplines that andcompany&Co. regularly collaborate with also become equal co-combatants in the projects they are involved with. Now based at the HAU in Berlin, the collective’s creative network is therefore continually growing. This includes Flemish director and author Joachim Robbrecht, visual artists Noah Fischer and Jan Brokof, musicians Reinier van Houdt and Simon Lenski, among many others. As statedin their website: “It take history personally. History, herstory, our story. As tireless space travellers through past and future ideologies, theories and utopias, they fight the present’s attack on the rest of time. Behind Walter Benjamin’s angel, they sweep up the shards and stick the fragments back together in prisms that refract the big Cs of the epochs: communism, capitalism, colonialism. Always with the inferred autobiographical question in mind: isn’t everything political?” www.andco.de Andrès Corchero (Barcelona, Spain) Between 1980 and 1985, Andrès Corchero studies theatre, contemporary mime and clown, working at the same time in different theatre and circus performances. He continues training with Albert Vidal , Odin Teatret, Shushaku and Dormu Dance. Fascinated by the body language and its expressive possibilities, in 1985 he encounters Butoh dance and travels to Tokyo to study with Kazuoh Ohno and Min Tanaka. Between 1986 and 1995 he is a member of the dance company Mai-Juku, directed by Min Tanaka, touring in Japan, Europe and United States. In 1991 he starts Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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working as a choreographer in Barcelona with the performance A un poeta futuro, the first of a long collaboration with the poet Feliu Formosa. Between 1993 and 2012 he directs with Rosa Muñoz the prestigious company Raravis, together they develop an intense work on creation and pedagogy. Andrés Corchero works and collaorates with many artists and art forms: the visual artist Jordi Rocosa, the pianist Agustí Fernández, the musician Joan Saura and the japanes dancer Oguri. Together with Oguri they performed and toured a piece based on their artistic dialogue and encounter My neighbor sky. Recently he worked with Pep Ramis, Enric Ases and Piero Steiner under the direction of María Muñoz on the performance La Sed y la Revolución. Since 2005 he has taught at the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático and the Conservatorio Superior de Danza of the Instituto del Teatro de Barcelona. www.andrescorchero.blogspot.com Atalaya TNT (Sevilla, Spain) Atalaya has become an unmistakable reference of theatre investigation in all Spain, which has been underlined by the most prestigious critics and like that was pointed by the judges that awarded it with the National Prize of Theatre 2008: “For the Creation of an original space for exhibition, production, education, and theatrical deliberation, as the result of a long professional career”. It focusses on three main aspects: Pedagogy, production and programming. The first one has been its watchword from the very beginning through the International Laboratory that has been realized seventeen times, inviting almost a hundred of pedagogues and teachers arriving from all theatrical traditions around the world. Since 2014 The Laboratory has been carried out on a Laboratory-school format that lasts two years. www.atalaya-tnt.com ASSéDIO (Porto, Portugal) ASSèDIO is a structure for creation that has developed an exceptional trajectory in the context of Portugal. A theatre approach that explores categories of tragedy in contemporaneity, an embodied physical and poetic language, history as an experience of the future. As stated in the website: “It is an artistic collective that is able to secure its own artistic autonomy and identity. Today with the shifts in physical, economic, and social conditions we take on a new cycle of projects, innovating our artistic language and expanding our public. The maturity of the collective comes both with the experience of the artists that compose is as well as with the construction of a trajectory made up of strong complicity due to artistic and human collaborations and the cultivation of a dialogue about theatrical practices”. www.assedioteatro.com Boundless Theatre (London, UK) “Boundless Theatre creates exhilarating, relevant new plays with and for audiences of 15-25 years old and curious others, touring across the UK and internationally. We empower, inspire and invest in future audiences and artists now and promote conversation, collaboration and exchange across the UK, Europe and internationally… We aim to make theatre a vital cultural and social Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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part of young people’s everyday lives.We will discover, champion and produce the best new plays for a diverse generation across the UK and internationally... We will become a destination for adventurous audiences, artists and ideas.” Additionally, Boundless Theatre announces Extended Universe, a two year project funded by Creative Europe where they will partner with three European theatre companies to develop new young independent theatre audiences across Europe. Boundless Theatre will lead the project partnering with four politically-engaged, outward-looking theatres from across Europe, Teater Grob (Denmark), Entropia (Greece) and Sala Beckett (Spain) with the shared aim of connecting more with young audiences and maximizing digital developments for storytelling. The partners have connected through conversations about recent social, cultural and political shifts in each country; together they will explore ideas around power, utopia and youth culture offering a platform to young adults and their perspectives. The four companies will each work with a theatre-maker (to be announced shortly) and 15-25 year olds over the next two years to co-create a narrative for multiple platforms (including live theatre), adopting a transmedia approach to storytelling. Work will be presented in Copenhagen, Barcelona, Athens and online (created in London) in May 2020. www.boundlesstheatre.org.uk Chiara Bersani (Italy) Chiara Bersani is an Italian artist working in the performing arts. Her formative path takes place mainly in the field of theatrical research with influences from contemporary dance and performing art. Suffering a moderate form of Osteogenesis Imperfecta, she is interested in the political meaning that a body can just take with its own image when interacting with the society. As an outcome of this considerations took place the inquiry path on the Political Body, started in 2013 and divided into Goodnight, peeping Tom (performances for 5 spectators), Miracle Blade (Film), Tell Me More (performance with a chorus of 8 male voices). The collaborations with other artists are one of the key features of her artistic career. Other major collaborations were with the Madrid-based company La Tristura, with the French choreographer Jérôme Bel and with the Argentinian director and playwright Rodrigo Garcia. www.chiarabersani.it Collective Ma’louba (Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany) Collective Ma’louba is a Syrian, Arabic-speaking artist and theatre collective, which is currently in residence at the Theatre an der Ruhr in. In its theatre productions, Collective Ma’louba questions the political and social condition of the Arab world against the background of recent rebellions and penetrates the taboos of Syrian and Arab society. Further artistic projects of thematic relevance such as installations, exhibitions and workshops accompany the theatre productions. The artists’ collective would like to create temporary, transnational, multilingual spaces of encounter at the national and international level. In order to maintain ties to the Arab cultural region and integrate artistic feedback into the project, the organizers will set up a second production venue at the Théâtre National Tunisien in Tunis, where Fadhel Jaibi, one of the most influential theatre artists in the Arab region, works as a director. Its core members – the Syrian Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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director Rafat Alzakout, Syrian author Mudar Alhaggi and Syrian actress Amal Omran – will work with artists from the Arab region to develop various interdisciplinary projects which focus on producing Arab-speaking theatre performances. The project will create comprehensive, multifaceted works of art which could include elements of drama, dance, film, music, readings and workshops. The cultural traditions, legends, and stories of the past and present in the Arabicspeaking region will comprise a significant portion of the content. Furthermore, the artists wish to investigate the cultural similarities and differences between Europe and the Arab world. The projects will be developed, rehearsed and produced at the Theatre an der Ruhr in Mülheim. www.collective-malouba.de Compania Sincara (Leipzig, Germany) Compania SIncara is a theatre collective founded in 2016 with a base in Leipzig. The name Sincara (from Spanish sin cara, “without a face”) alludes to the special theatrical work with masks and figures that distinguish the company. Each piece is worked out in a collective work process and makes invisible worlds become visible, full of figures and stories that tell something about being human. In her playful handling of new and old, experimental and historical ways of playing and narrating, Compania Sincara creates theatre experiences full of enthusiasm and poetry. www.companiasincara.com Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre KRILA (Rijeka, Croatia) Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre KRILA has in its name the basic guidelines for its work. These are a development and practice of creativity as an artistic, social and personal value; fostering educational, research and laboratory approach to theater and performing arts; questioning the methods and ways of creating, performing and learning; encompassing, connecting and experimenting with different manifestations and tendencies in nowadays diverse theatre and performing arts practices. Key activities are production of contemporary theatre performances such as collaborative and devised theatre, physical theatre, dramatic corporeal mime and participatory performances; creation and organization of a regular educational program for children, youth and adults; organization of master classes for the professional development of contemporary performing artists, developing collaborations with local artists, students, associations, schools, institutions, and networking and collaborating with international artists and organizations in the field. www.krila.org D’As Entranhas (Lisbon, Portugal) An independent theatre company and cultural association that promotes cultural interventions in the domain of theatre performance. Developing an innovative artistic language and collaborative artistic process, they research audiovisual, multimedia and visual arts techniques. From its beginnings up until today they have been focused on developing an experimental dramaturgy, with a creative process that is developed in partnership with the performers. www.dasentranhas.com Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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DAH Theatre (Belgrade, Serbia) DAH Theatre is the only professional and experimental theatre group, independent nongovernmental, in Serbia that exists and has created nationally and internationally for over 20 years. Directors Jadranka Andelic and Dijana Milosevic formed DAH theatre out of a need for profound experimental work. In 2003 DAH Theatre enlarged its activities by founding DAH Theatre Research Centre (DTRC) to deliver an ongoing program of workshops, lectures, seminars guest performances and festivals. DTRC is a venue that has grown into a significant spot on the cultural and artistic map of Belgrade and Serbia. The work of the centre is aimed towards a constant Exchange of knowledge, experience and ideas amongst artists and participants from various theatrical and national traditions. www.dasentranhas.com Demo (Coimbra, Portugal) DEMO (Dispositivo Experimental, Multidisciplinar e Orgânico) was establishes in 2010, from a group of six performers who have had individual training in many different academic areas but a shared common studies in theatre made in and by CITAC (Círculo de Iniciação Teatral da Academia de Coimbra) between 2004 and 2011. Since then, they have been developing projects in performative and visual arts. The artists that compose DEMO come from visual arts, graphic arts, communication design, theatre – stage direction/interpretation, primary teaching, international relations and European studies. They develop projects that combine and interlace theatre, performance, sound art and visual art. www.demo.pt Dewey Dell (Cesena, Italy) Dewey Dell is an Italian company born in 2007 and now based in Cesena/Italy, Berlin and Vilnius. The four members are Teodora, Demetrio, Agata Castellucci and Eugenio Resta. They have strong skills in different areas. This took each of them to give priority to a specific aspect of the work, without giving up a collective modeling of materials. Since 2007 Dewey Dell has created different works: à elle vide (2007), KIN KEEN KING (2008), Baldassarre (2009), Cinquanta Urlanti Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti (2010), Grave (2011/12), Marzo (2013) and various forms of live concert. In 2017 Dewey Dell created “Sleep Technique”, in collaboration with Massimo Pupillo from the band Zu for the creation of the score, and a solo dance work, entitled ‘Deriva Traversa’. In 2018 they present the diptych I am within’ & ‘I am without. The name Dewey Dell is a tribute to Faulkner and to the young girl of As I lay dying, under whose look the company prepares itself to wander towards the abyss. www.deweydell.com

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Eddita Braun (Salzburg, Austria) Editta Braun company’s work is opposing the meshes of network of systemically legitimised constraints, that is gradually creeping into our everyday lives, by exposing themselves to conditions of production in the so called third world. Artistic productions and collaborations in India, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Senegal, Greece: this is not just the experience of a reality “outside” – it is also the bringing-back of these experiences into the increasingly hermetic space of our societies. The process of creating emphasizes on the equal collaboration of artists from different disciplines. In this way dancers, actors, musicians, light-designers, visual artists join the company to collaborate under the same umbrella. www.editta-braun.com El conde de Torrefiel (Barcelona, Spain) Led by Pablo Gisbert (Ontinyent, Spain, 1982) and Tanya Beyeler (Lugano, Switzerland, 1980), El Conde de Torrefiel is an artistic project whose stage works possess a visual and textual aesthetic that combines literature, plastic arts and choreography aiming to transcend the parameters of verbal language. El Conde de Torrefiel configure their works as chapters along a broad path of investigation; projects that approach theatre from an immediate time-frame, formulating hypotheses that can provide an answer to the mysteries put forward by this 21 st Century and the ways of representing them on stage. It is one of the main representatives of a new Spanish contemporary theatre internationally. The company’s professional career began in 2010 with the premier of La historia del rey vencido por el aburrimiento. Additionally, El Conde de Torrefiel is part of the artistic team of La Veronal dance company, and signs the textual and dramaturgical composition of their pieces. www.elcondedetorrefiel.com Eugenio Ravo (Italy) In 1980-85, Eugenio Ravo studies Corporeal Mime in Etienne Decroux’s school. He then becomes teacher and assistant in the same school. He is currently teaching, researching and creating through different workshops mainly in Italy and with the work of his international company Compagnia Esule Teatro. Its pedagogic and creative work is based on what he calls “the sense of the awakening and rebirth through the movement”. https://it.linkedin.com/in/eugenio-ravo-328a1a90 FC Bergman (Brussels/Antwerp/Gent, Belgium) FC Bergman was founded in 2008 by six actors/theatre-makers/artists: Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck, Matteo Simoni and Bart Hollanders. Simoni and Hollanders have since left the core team and now work on an ad hoc basis with FC Berman. The company quickly developed a theatrical language all of their own, which apart from being anarchistic and slightly chaotic, is essentially visual and poetic. In their shows the floundering, ever-striving human being has often taken centre stage. www.fcbergman.be Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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Federica Porello/Xavi Moreno (Barcelona, Spain) For years, Federica Porello and Xavi Moreno have been developing a specific method for staging the relationship between bodies and objects. To make it a reality, they have developed what they call a “basic vocabulary” – a lexicon that allows them to articulate a joint language involving both physical and inanimate objects with actors and dancers. The “objects” with which they work with have been chosen for their material properties and neutral forms: objects without history, without connotations. The wood props are relatively nondescript, but in combination with other wood pieces or with the surrounding human forms, they shape concepts and ideas through movement. It is a laboratory designed as a creative space in which participants dialogue through dance and object manipulation. They explore how objects can help us perceive the materiality of gestures and how through our movements we can play with the ideas evoked by each object. Intended for dance, physical and visual theatre students, and also those of other disciplines (always bearing in mind that movement is at the core of the project). http://ifbarcelona.cat/programacio/laboratori-wewood-dansa-dobjectes-federica-porello-xavimoreno/ / www.federicaporello.com Guerassim Dichliev (Sofia, Bulgaria) As stated in the website: “Everything started for me in Bulgaria in 1989… On 10 of November, the Berlin Wall fell, a few mounts later, I left the Faculty of Physics of Sofia University and started, as a joke, to study the pantomime. In the beginning I started as an amateur (Mimе-Studio Alba) and then at the National Academy of Theatre and Cinema. And so, I gradually learned the craft. On the streets and theatre scenes of Sofia I met my first real audience. Then I came to Paris in 1993 to continue my education at The International School of Mimе in Paris ‘Marcel Marceau’. Upon my graduation in 1996, Mr. Marceau, invited me to become his assistant and teacher in the school. I worked at the School until it was closed in 2005. In parallel I joined the Company of Mime Marceau and so I’ve toured with him in France and internationally. My direct references are: Marcel Marceau, Etienne Decroux, Jacques Lecoq, but also Grog, Victor Borge, Slava Polunin and Peter Shub, Théâtre de l’Ange fou and Cirque du Soleil. My favourite universes: the physical and corporeal theatre, the commedia dell arte, the circus, the opera, the theatre clown”. www.guerassimdichliev.com Guillermo Weickert Compañia de danza (Sevilla, Spain) Guillermo Weickert Cia. is a structure formed in 2007 with the complicity of El Mandaito Producciones S.L. with the intention of creating shows that unite the rigorous and daring research of the scenic languages with the artistic quality. Guillermo Weickert is a stage director, actor, dancer and choreographer. If there is a common element in all his productions, it is the interest in the interpreter as a geographical centre of their creations. All the scenic devices that constitutes each one of his pieces is sustained around this figure as the central axis. www.guillermoweickert.com Hijinx and Blind Summit (Cardiff, UK) Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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As stated in the website: “We are a professional theatre company based at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff who tour small scale theatre throughout the UK and Europe. What makes us different is that our casts always include actors who have learning disabilities. The ability of these effortlessly talented performers is at the heart of every show we produce, creating work that is utterly absorbing, surprising and provocative. We call it inclusive theatre because it makes much of the skills and raw talent of people who often get overlooked in today’s world and gives them a platform to make and perform stunning theatre alongside actors who don’t have disabilities”. www.hijinx.org.uk Hippocampe (Paris, France) Hippocampe, was created in 1997, with the aim to develop and transmit knowledge related to the practice of Corporeal Mime. Developed by Étienne Decroux, one of the reformers of theatre in France in the 20th century, this discipline offers an in-depth approach to body movement. Today, no one doubts the importance of body preparation work for actors. However, the inclusion of adequate education is still very neglected in theatrical training, whether directed to an amateur or professional audience. At Hippocampe the mime is envisaged as an essential tool in the formation of the actor. Hippocampe offers courses and workshops on corporeal mime and its repertoire.. Outside of the courses, research workshops are organized where Corporeal Mime is confronted and set in collaboration with other artistic practices. Hippocampe regularly invites artists from other disciplines to participate in regular classes, or offers courses open to all audiences. All these experiments provide materials for reflections and practical elements that enrich teaching and inspire creative work. www.mime-corporel-theatre.com Horman Poster (Bilbao, Spain) Horman Poster is a collaborative project aimed at developing artistic and educative projects within the performative arts. Since 2010, they have developed a practice with an innovative and critical spirit, with the intention of creating a aesthetics in contact with a community and cultural diversity. www.hormanposter.eu Kellie Hughes (Dublin, Ireland) As an ensemble member of Blue Raincoat Theatre Company for seven years, Kellie created a number of new works with the company including The Poor Mouth, At Swim Two Birds, The Third Policeman, The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, The Hollow in the Sand and Sanctuary. Directing credits for Blue Raincoat during this time include The Cat and the Moon, At the Hawk’s Well and remounts of The Bald Soprano and A Brief Taste of Lightning. Kellie Hughes has assisted director Mikel Murfi on a number of projects including B for Baby (Abbey Theatre international tour), Bird by Julie Feeney (Dublin Theatre Festival In Development programme) and Manchán Magan’s bilingual play Focal Point. She trained at Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique, London and at the Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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Roy Hart Theatre of the Voice, Maleragues and holds a first class BA honours in Theatre and History and an MA honours in Physical Theatre. She is currently Director in Residence at University College Dublin and Artistic Director of the UCD Ad Astra Performing Arts Academy. www.giaf.ie/about/co-producers/kellie-hughes Key Performance (Lisbon, Portugal) Marlene Monteiro Freitas, born in Cape Verde, based in Lisbon, is one of the most exciting new talents of her generation. Her latest creation is a stunningly inventive and positively dazzling show. A “grotesque ball” of mechanical puppets or stone statues that come to life against a background of shrill and percussive music, de marfim e carne (of ivory and flesh) reveals a very personal world filled with references passing by at full speed. www.keyperformance.se La Ribot (Madrid, Spain – Geneve, Switzerland) Born in Madrid and resident in Geneve, La Ribot is an artist whose projects are based on the idea of movement, bodies and plastic arts. Starting from the beginning, the shows used a mix of video elements, languages, words, installations, and relational works. www.laribot.com La Tristura (Madrid, Spain) La Tristura investigates the limits between presentation and representation, showing their interest on contemporary theatre, and compromise with the intuition that intimacy and poetry essentially are political concepts. During these years La Tristura collaborates with contexts like Festival de Otoño in Madrid, Cena Contemporânea in Brasilia, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Las Naves in Valencia, the Łaźnia Nowa Theatre in Cracow, Spielart Festival in Munich, El Canto de la Cabra in Madrid or the FITBH in Belo Horizonte, among others. They also generated contexts such as Festival Salvaje, the Gran Convocatoria Mundial or the series La tristura 2004-2014. They have always tried to connect cultural agents and artists, trusting that from those connections, unexpected and inspiring movements will be born. Their work is still tied with Madrid, the city where they live and develop their projects. www.latristura.com Mal Pelo (Barcelona, Spain) In January 1989 Pep Ramis and María Muñoz founded the dance theatre group Mal Pelo: “Mal Pelo, with artistic codirection of Pep Ramis and Maria Muñoz, is a creative group characterized by a shared responsibility, one of the distinguishing facts of the group, that it has produced more than 25 performances. Both also are in charge of the design of the scenic space. From 1989, Mal Pelo has been developing its own artistic language through movement, incorporating the theatricality with the creation of dramatic arts that include the word, also working with music composers for the creation of original soundtracks, collaborating with video artists, among others. The basic activity is the creation of performances, always together with the necessity to Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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experience and to develop the main subjects that throughout all these years we have been developing”. www.malpelo.org Miet Warlop (Berlin, Germany – Brussels/Gent, Belgium) The works of Belgian artist Miet Warlop are described as living canvases with strokes of silent humour. Her work shifts between the visual arts, performance and theatre. With a Master’s Degree in Multimedia Arts from KASK (Ghent), she won the Franciscus Pycke Jury Award and the prize for Best Young Theatre Work 2004 for her graduation project, Huilend Hert, Aangeschoten Wild. Since then she has presented her work around the world, breaking moulds across all genre. She lives and works between Ghent, Berlin and Brussels. www.mietwarlop.com MOTUS (Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy) Italian theatre company Motus was founded in 1991. A nomad and independent company, in constant movement between countries, historic moments and disciplines, the company burst onto the scene in the Nineties with productions wielding great physical and emotional impact and has always anticipated and portrayed some of the harshest contradictions of the present day. It has experienced and created hyper- contemporary trends in the theatre, performing authors such as Camus, Beckett, DeLillo, Rilke or their beloved Pasolini. They have received several acknowledgements, including three UBU Prizes and prestigious special awards for their work. Silvia Calderoni – their tireless protagonist – has worked with Motus since 2005 and is the winner of many awards that include “Best Italian Actress” honors UBU Prize, Elizabeth Turroni, Marte and Virginia Reiter Awards. Motus has performed all over the world, from Under the Radar in New York, to Festival Trans Amériques in Montreal, Santiago a Mil (Chile), the Fiba Festival in Buenos Aires, as well as all over Europe. www.motusonline.com MOVEO (Barcelona, Spain) MOVEO is a performing arts centre dedicated to the creation, training and investigation of physical theatre. Founded in 2005 in Barcelona, it houses a permanent company, residencies of artists, courses, workshops and a variety of activities around the expressive body. Since its creation, Cia Moveo has been rewarded by various prizes, the latest ones being for Best Show at the Feria Internacional de Teatro y Danza de Huesca 2015 (Spain), Best Company Award at the Imaginarius Festival 2016 (Portugal) and Best Premiere of Street Arts at the Fira Tarrega 2017. Within the creation axe, Moveo specialises in devised shows using the body and the art of movement as the main elements of expression, both in venues and in the street, mixing various disciplines and working with artists from different cultural backgrounds. www.moveo.cat

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Needcompany (Brussels, Belgium) Needcompany is an international, multilingual and multidisciplinary performance group formed in 1986 by the artists Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey. This diversity is reflected best in the ensemble itself, in which on average 7 different nationalities are represented. Over the years Needcompany has put increasing emphasis on this ensemble and several artistic alliances have flourished: Lemm&Barkey (Grace Ellen Barkey and Lot Lemm) and OHNO COOPERATION (Maarten Seghers and Jan Lauwers). Needcompany revolves around the individual artist. Everything is founded on the artistic project, on authenticity, necessity and meaning. The medium itself is continually questioned, and there is constant examination of the quality of the content to be conveyed in relation to the form it takes. Needcompany believes in quality, cooperation and innovation. Needcompany is a leading voice in the social debate on the urgency and beauty of art at both a domestic and an international level. www.needcompany.org Oliver Pollack (Berlin, Germany) As stated in the website: “Since two decades I am ‘married’ now to ‘mime corporel dramatique’ [sic]. My formation in physical theatre led me first one year to the Commedia School of Copenhagen (Lecoq-style), then a year to Paris to the great Master Marcel Marceau and finally 6 very intensive years of apprenticeship at the école de mime corporel dramatique London. Graduated with diploma, continued in the post-graduate program and the theatre company Théâtre de l’Ange Fou. There, under the very devoted and stringent direction of Corinne Soum and Steven Wasson (the last two longstanding assistants of Etienne Decroux) I gained my substantiated and profound knowledge in this art form. It was here, where my fascination for the ‘strict doctrine’ commenced, it’s manifold possibilities of expression and its inherent beauty. After 10 years abroad and now 10 years back in Germany, Berlin, I have performed and taught in this art form very frequently, and extended and enriched my ways of expression and teaching steadily. Ever since, I was interested in conveying physical performing in general and specifically this movement technique/art form/stage philosophy”. http://www.mime.berlin/oliver-pollak/ Out of Balanz (Copenhagen, Denmark) Out of Balanz was named one of the 13 most innovative physical theatre companies, alongside such companies as The SITI Company and DV8, in “backstage.com”. Katrina Bugaj and Troels Hagen Findsen are the co-founders and joint artistic directors of Out of Balanz. Katrina Biugaj is an American director, performer/creator, writer and researcher-practitioner. Troels Hagen Findsen is a Danish actor, performer/creator, writer, director and musician. Out of Balanz’s work is the result of (often long-term) collaborations with an ever evolving ensemble of international artists and associates. The company’s approach is rooted in devising and ensemble practice. With an emphasis on rigorous experimentation, playful exploration and exchange, they seek to further the creation and understanding of artistic expression. www.outofbalanz.com Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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Pere Faura (Barcelona, Spain) His work is characterized by the appropriation of elements of pop culture, in a multidisciplinary choreography among all the elements that make up the theatrical gear. Pere Faura graduated from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam in 2006, with a piece that wins the ITS Festival Award, and is selected for the DansClick tour in different cities in the Netherlands. That same year he entered as a resident choreographer at the Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam and in 2009 he received the prestigious Charlotte Kohler Price. In 2011 he graduated from the Amsterdam Master of Choreography and returns to Barcelona where he continues to produce new shows with the collaboration of several creative centers in the city. www.perefaura.com Peter Stamer (Berlin, Germany) Peter Stamer (DE/A) is a theatre maker in the context of contemporary performing arts. In his projects, he is interested in exploring conditions for discursive and physical empowerment within given performative, social and narrative apparatuses. Beyond his theatre work and teaching activities in all of Europe, his performance and theatre projects have led him to China, the USA, Canada, Egypt or Israel. Next to the performative adaptation of Nietzsche’s essay On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, among his recent works are to be found the international building/performance project A Future Archaeology in Berlin, Vienna and Cairo (2012-2013), which provided the initial impulses for the book How to Collaborate? – Questioning Togetherness in the Performing Arts (Passagen Verlag) which was published in 2016; his performative installation and film 26 Letters to Deleuze (EMPAC New York) in 2014; The Circus of Life A-Z (together with Yosi Wanunu) at Tanzquartier Vienna (2015). www.peterstamer.com Pippo Delbono (Italy) Pippo Delbono is one of Italy’s most unconventional and distinctive theatre artists. He began his studies of dramatic art in a traditional school that he left in research for a new theatrical language. He decided to study the principles of eastern theatre, where is central a detailed and strict work of the actor on the body and on the voice, where theatre and dance meet and merge. At the beginning of the Eighties, he founded Pippo Delbono Company with whom he represented all his performances, from Il tempo degli assassini (1987) to La Menzogna (2008). They are not representations of theatrical texts but entire creations where the actors are part of a stable core that grows up through the time. www.pippodelbono.it Platform 88 (Montpellier, France) Platform 88 is a contemporary mime company founded in 2009 by Sebastien Loesener and Janaina Tupan. The body is at the very center of the company’s creative process. Body, source of an imaginary, who expresses itself not to replace words, but to go beyond and below them. Body who is at the same time poetic and dramatic. It is at the interface of those two forms that the Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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company has designed its mark. Up to today, they have created the shows Platform 88, (Alice), Nina, On n’arrache pas les ailes des papillons si facilement, and numerous short performances associated to specific researches. The mission of the company is to develop and promote contemporary mime. The body is what anchors any human to the world. Based on that ethos we aim to play with its universal aspect and the differences in which it can be expressed, understanding the body as an entrance door to the being. The goals are, in respect to that, artistic as much as esthetic, philosophical or political. www.compagnieplatform88.com Plexus Polaire (France/Norway) Yngvild Aspeli’s performances are created between Norway and France, and performed throughout Europe. She develops a visual universe that mixes sweetness and cruelty. Through images, sounds and gestures, imagination and matter, Aspeli gives life to the most hidden feelings. An approach centered around the double presence of the actor, in relation to the human-sized puppet. www.plexuspolaire.com Poulpe Électrique (Arcueil, France) Poulpe Électrique is an arts association founded in 2015 with the mission to support the work of multidisciplinary artists, as well as contribute with the development and dissemination of the arts. It aims to create original and compelling work in France and abroad. Polyglot and multicultural, Poulpe Électrique focuses on speaking about contemporary themes through a critical and poetic dialogue between physical expression and the digital arts. The supported artists work on creating shows but also art installations. Poulpe Électrique’s first production is the physical theatre show Feminine, but Elastic. It was premiered in 2016 and speaks about women and the media by questioning and playing with the re-appropriation of female role models. Their second and current project is a show for the 2019-2020 season on the themes of obsolescence and the Anthropocene: As I watched the clouds float by, the night came. Parallel to the artistic productions, Poulpe Électrique provides training to professional artists, amateurs, and any individual or group interested in developing artistic skills. Through organising workshops on movement and theatre, and computing for the arts, it also focuses on audience development. www.poulpeelectrique.net Projecte Ingenu (Barcelona, Spain) As stated in the website: “In 2013 a group of young people detected that they didn’t feel comfortable with the market tempos. Projecte Ingenu was born as a research group about theatrical practice, with the aim of merging professional work with personal development and investigation of a possible model for the contemporary actor. We began an actoral training based on ancient Greek chorus and vocal music experimentation, working on the rehearsal room but also on non-conventional outdoor spaces. We started to use the concept “slowtheatre” to define us. The Slow Movement addresses the issue of “time poverty” through making connections. We Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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are constantly looking for connections that return us to humanity, to all that relates to life. We applied this philosophy in our rehearsals: the scene got naked and the actor became the centre of the piece. Theatre is the relationship between the actor and the audience, hand to hand, in every word. This experience, this humanity does not have limits, it crosses borders. The aim was to start a regular job without boundaries between acting, playwriting and directing actors. We wanted to build a “slow” space, where the rush to solve a scene didn’t fit in our philosophy. The work sessions organised by themes brought about investigation in different areas: theatre out of context (theatre space and its limits), theatre and society (social intervention experiences with theatre as a centerpiece), the theatre performer (actor is able to alter the space-time experience of the receiver). Gradually we have found the need to materialise in shows our dynamic of working, trying not to lose the essence of continuous work, regular and wide, although the rhythm of theatres compels us to talk with the standard tempos of production. So, nowadays we combine artistic creation with our training activities and research”. www.projecteingenu.com Protocol – Lanre Malaolu (London, UK) As a director, choreographer and performance artist based in London, UK, Lanre is co- founder of Protocol. His work merges physical theatre with hip-hop & contemporary dance to create work which aims to enhance and challenge our social and political worldviews. A key element of Lanre’s work stems from Rudolf Laban’s movement psychology, which he uses to create dynamic and bold choreography charged with truth. Lanre is also a trained actor, graduating from Drama Centre London and has worked extensively in theatre and television. www.lanremalaolu.com / www.protocoldance.co.uk Quim Bigas (Copenhagen, Denmark – Stockholm, Sweden – Barcelona, Spain) Quim Bigas Bassart was born in Barcelona and he is an artist working within the fields of performance arts, information and education. Since 2007 combines performing for other people, collaborations and his own work. His interest in dance lies in the conversational, the practice and the encounter. He has a tendency towards working focus on movement research, social interactions and information procedures. His works are very diverse and are located around concerns and triggers on the gaze, the idea of experience, the present, performativity and commitment in an a artistic environment. He uses sources that comes from Popular Culture, Performative and Theatre Essays, Sociology and Information Science. Quim Bigas currently lives between Copenhagen, Stockholm and Barcelona where he develops his own work, as well as collaborating with different artists. www.quimbigas.com

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Rootless Root (Athens, Greece) RootlessRoot, co-founded and co-directed by Linda Kapetanea and Josef Frucek. As stated in the website: “It is a structure that supports our vision and creative ideas. We could describe it as a white cloud always changing, disappearing, appearing and flowing, as it needs. It is a movement driven, reflective platform that we have established in order to develop an artistic language that is accessible, primal, creative and playful. We are movement practitioners that are fundamentally interested in human emotion and cultural expression. It’s a structure through which we realize our practical philosophy in order to further expand and discover our artistic capacities and desires to dive into the emotional landscapes of the human being. RootlessRoot is a meeting point, an intersection and a threshold where conflicting ideas transform into a journey of sculpturing events inserted with risk and unpredictability. We are building language of physical expression that is chaotic, raw, and can stay in opposition to what surrounds us both culturally and politically. Our approach is born out of belief that the time of heroes is not gone, and the body can still express our innermost desires, our feelings and our vision. Besides creating, we are developing training program called Fighting Monkey.” www.rootlessroot.com Taldans (Istanbul, Turkey) Taldans was officially established by Mustafa Kaplan and Filiz Sızanlı in 2003. The partners met each other and worked on their first project in 1996 at Theatre Research Labratory. Kaplan’s engineering and Sızanlı’s architectural background have influenced them towards establishing a common language. Taldans received its name from “Theatre Research Laboratory” (Tiyatro Araştırma Laboratuvarı) under Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s Theatre in earlier times. Beklan Algan and Ayla Algan, who were administors of works on creative acting and theatre anthropology, opened the doors of TAL to dance work as Taldans realized its first work there. Under the supervision of Mustafa Kaplan, the dance work and laboratory theatre’s effect and contribution turned into free dance courses, dance/movement workshops and exhibitions to meet the movement needs of dancers and actors/actresses. The partners exhibited their first work in this studio with the name “Taldans”. Within Laboratory Theatre, the increase of participants of practices of dance/movement work through “sharing experiences” caused them to move from Tal Studio to a new space in 2001. The first three years was without any name, but was full of courses and exhibitions at their new address, Sadri Alışık Sokak No.33 in Taksim; resulting them to establish ÇATI Çağdaş Dans Sanatçıları Derneği (Contemporary Dance Artists Association) in 2004 with former and new members’ participation. As one of the founders of ÇATI Association, Kaplan and Sızanlı continued their work and production as Taldans under this structure. In 2005, they moved to a new studio space in Tophane and continued Taldans’ and their own relations and productions with ÇATI Association in the following years. www.taldans.com

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Teatro de los Sentidos (Barcelona, Spain) An international group of artists-researchers based in Barcelona with 20 years of experience under the artistic direction of the Company’s founder, Colombian anthropologist and dramaturge Enrique Vargas. They are developers of games researching upon the poetics of the senses. They have developed a methodology which connects the sensorial languages, the poetics of games and theatrical creation. We make experiences, which blur the usual line between audience and actors in traditional theatre schemes, to foster an interactive and creative participation of the audience. The audience is invited to explore their labyrinthine spaces as if it was participating in a big game. www.teatrodelossentidos.com Theatre im Bahnhof (Graz, Austria) Graz-based Theatre im Bahnhof makes contemporary theatre for the people and deals with the Austrian identity between tradition and pop culture. It is Austria’s largest independent theatre company and has been a regular guest at brut, currently with the regular interview series GUESTS at brut – A Talk-Show Concentrate. www.theatre-im-bahnhof.com The Secret Company (Budapest, Hungary) The Secret Company is an independent theatre group founded in 2010 with the professional leading of Péter Kárpáti. As stated in the website: “Briefly said, our aim is to blur the boundaries between playing and reality – border intrusion. The actors form a very intimate and direct relationship with the audience. They play very close to them, within their reach. In this closeness it’s hardly possible to lie. If the performance turns out well, part of the audience will believe that everything was created really there and that time, that is, the whole piece was improvised”. www.titkostarsulat.blogspot.com Theatre Re (London, U.K.) Established in 2009, Theatre Re is a London-based international ensemble creating thoughtprovoking and moving work. Its shows examine fragile human conditions in a compelling, physical style embracing mime, theatre and live music, and are often described as magical, poetic and tender as well as disturbing and haunting. The name of the company comes from the prefix “re-”. It is the “re” of re-discovering and re-imagining, breathing new life into what already exists. Intimate collaborations with experts in different fields – such as science and public health – and various community groups throughout the devising process play a crucial part in the development of the work. Productions have toured widely in the UK but also in France, Brazil, Peru, Ireland, Switzerland and Germany. www.retheatre.com

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The Emergency Room (Dublin, Ireland) The Emergency Room (a necessary space) was created by Olwen Fouéré in 2009 for projects “in need of immediate attention” and as a virtual holding space for the development of art-based ideas, relationships and performance contexts. The development phase is followed by a partnership with an established production company for the full creation and production of the work. www.theemergencyroom.ie Tim Crouch (Manchester, U.K.) Tim Crouch is an experimental theatre make. His plays include My Arm, An Oak Tree, ENGLAND and The Author. These take various forms, but all reject theatrical conventions, especially realism, and invite the audience to help create the work. Interviewed in 2007, Crouch said, “Theatre in its purest form is a conceptual artform. It doesn’t need sets, costumes and props, but exists inside an audience’s head”. Stephen Bottoms, Professor of Contemporary Theatre & Performance at the University of Manchester, has written that Crouch’s plays “make up one of the most important bodies of English-language playwriting to have emerged so far in the twenty-first century... I can think of no other contemporary playwright who has asked such a compelling set of questions about theatrical form, narrative content and spectatorial engagement”. www.timcrouchtheatre.co.uk ToTum Teatre (Barcelona, Spain) ToTum Teatre is a company based in Barcelona and operating since 2014. It is an organization dedicated to spread and support physical and visual theatre through performances, educational work and events. With the idea of an international theatre, “our artistic language is based on movement, especially on Corporal Mime. ToTum TeaTre organizes workshops and classes for Universities; Schools and Cultural Centres. The most recent theatre production is RatOn created in collaboration with the theatre Sala Fenix and the art centre La Miranda, it is officially supported by InIt (International Network of Italian Theatre). In 2014 ToTum TeaTre created the show Cuarteto Combinat, ith a residency in the centre for creation NunArt and in the civic centre Parc Sandaru – Kinètic program. In 2013 ToTum TeaTre with the Italian company Morks created Inevidenza – Workshop and Street performance”. www.totumteatre.com Toxic Dreams (Vienna, Austria) As stated in the website: “Since 1997 we have been putting on shows that deal with the not knowing… shows that busy themselves with the slippery nature of reality… shows that refuse coherent, narrative, through lines… shows that celebrate the ambiguity of everyday’s life… shows that became more and more fragmented as time went by… We are committed to ensemble work, we believe that craft and skills still matter to the process of making theatre… we try to keep rehearsals as long as we can afford, we believe that the show finds itself during the Valentina Temussi / Daria Lavrennikov Mapping #3 – A selection of Europe-based companies/artists

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work… we resist/object to the importance given to text over other aspects of performance (actors, set, music etc…)… we think that the best way to view our shows is to accept confusion as part of the experience of sitting in the theatre… we put shows that ask the audience to make up its own mind, we don’t know better… We are mind jugglers… vaudeville clowns… film buffs… popular culture junkies… gertrude stein followers… we like silent movies… godard… musicals… we are liars… cheap dancers… risk takers… bad gamblers… we love the old fashioned, big acting style theatre, we don’t know what to do with it… we can still watch someone slams into a door, it still makes us laugh…” www.toxicdreams.at Vincent Dance Theatre (U.K.) Founded in 1994 and led by Artistic Director Charlotte Vincent, Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT) produces powerful and engaging dance theatre work accompanied by extensive programmes of social engagement and professional development work. Charlotte Vincent is considered “one of the UK’s leading female choreographer/directors” and “one of the most important feminist artists working in Britain today” (The Observer). VDT is an international ensemble of multi-tasking collaborators who devise interdisciplinary performance to challenge conventional values in dance and gender politics. www.vincentdt.com WORKINGLIFEBALANCE LTD. (Graz, Austria) WORKINGLIFEBALANCE LTD. is a partnership under civil law (Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts), created in 2017 by performer Christina Lederhaas and writer/performer Johannes Lederhaas. The work mainly focuses on the creation of performances at the interface between movement and language. Both of them coming from Graz, Christina studied dramatic arts at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz, corporal mime (Ècole de mime corporel) in England and developed and twisted her work through international residencies and guest performances. Lederhaas’ works on and off stage are at the intersection of stagnation, voice, dance and clown. She was Stair-Artist-in-Residence in Belgrad in 2015 and was responsible for the artistic overall concept of the Styrian Cultural Award Show 2016. 2017 she began a new work with the composer Slobodan Kajkut at the intersection of dance and composition. Currently, she is working with the composer Reiko Yamada at the same intersection. Johannes Schrettle was part of several collectives, working for theater in Bahnhof Graz, and Forum Stadtpark among others. As a writer, he had his texts produced in several theatres in Austria and Germany. In 2007 he was a co-founder of the independent company which he is still working with as a director, performer, and writer. www.workinglifebalanceltd.wordpress.com

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A selection of Europe-based research and training centres in the field of non-institutionalised, independent, physical, and movement-based theatre1 Valentina Temussi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

If we take in consideration Marco De Marinisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reflection on last century theatre we can actually find a good parameter to choose what is significant today in terms of schools, research centres and workshops. The choice is wide today, but the best practice lies in the paths open by the great masters of last century and in the respect of their vision of experimentation and continuous research. To transmit their ideas one must be open to experimenting, to continue their research it means to facilitate exchanges between theatre ideas and also different art forms. De Marinis said in his book Ripensare il Novecento Teatrale (2018) that theatre of the 20th century doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean the whole theatre of the 20th century, but it concerns what, in the many and variegated experiences of last century, has made history, beyond the chronicle, and has contributed to change in depth the way to do and to think the theatre of the contemporaneity. The selection proposed here is just an example of movement centres in Europe where physical/visual theatre is studied in connection to the strong 20th century tradition and the work is organised and set in order to transmit knowledge and keep experimenting with an open vision to collect, exchange and collaborate. *****

The following descriptions are faithful reproductions of the information, data and style of the websites of the selected centres. Only few minor changes were made. 1

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Antwerpse Mimestudio (Antwerp, Belgium) Martin Hoevenaars and Luc van Nyvelseel decided to change the focus from training to performing. Together with visual artist Willemien van Dijke and visual and sound artist Pat Risk, they collaborate to create performances where different art forms come together. Other activity is the organisation of special workshops on movement and visual theatre. www.mimestudio.be Hippocampe (Paris, France) Hippocampe was created in 1997, with the aim to develop and transmit knowledge related to the practice of Corporeal Mime. Developed by Ă&#x2030;tienne Decroux, one of the reformers of theatre in France in the twentieth century, this discipline offers an in-depth approach to body movement. Today no one doubts the importance of body preparation work for actors. However, the inclusion of adequate education is still very neglected in theatrical training, whether directed to an amateur or professional audience. At Hippocampe the mime is envisaged as an essential tool in the formation of the actor. Hippocampe offers courses and workshops on corporeal mime and its repertoire.. Outside of the courses, research workshops are organized where Corporeal Mime is confronted and set in collaboration with other artistic practices. Hippocampe regularly invites artists from other disciplines to participate in regular classes, or offers courses open to all audiences. All these experiments provide materials for reflections and practical elements that enrich teaching and inspire creative work. www.mime-corporel-theatre.com Mime Centrum Berlin (Berlin, Germany) As an open space for production, education, cooperation and for international exchange on dance and theatre, since 2011 the Mime Centrum is part of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute. With this cooperation, the existing fields of work of the Mime Centre Berlin and the ITI have increasingly interlocked and inspired each other. Today the once separate working areas of the Mime Centre function naturally as formats, projects and areas of the International Theatre Institute Berlin. The Mime Centrum Berlin, with its focus on supporting the work of national and international freelance artists in the Berlin area, has made the International Theatre Institute a vibrant place of collaboration for artists, academics, archivists as well as students and theatre enthusiasts. Additionally, to collect and to make available audiovisual documents of the performing arts in the media library of the Mime Centrum is one of its most important and continuous areas of activity. All media can be watched in the premises of the media library. In its video studio, the Mime Centrum realizes its own video productions as a medium of reference and analysis for movement in dance and theatre. The recording of selected performances is therefore a practical field of work of the media library. The digitalisation and digital preservation of the collected and self-produced audiovisual media is an essential field of activity www.mimecentrum.iti-germany.de/en

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Teatro de los Sentidos (Barcelona, Spain) An international group of artists-researchers based in Barcelona with 20 years of experience under the artistic direction of the Company’s founder, Colombian anthropologist and dramaturge Enrique Vargas. The group is developer of games researching upon the poetics of the senses, and it has developed a methodology which connects the sensorial languages, the poetics of games and theatrical creation: “We make experiences, which blur the usual line between audience and actors in traditional theatre schemes, to foster an interactive and creative participation of the audience. The audience is invited to explore their labyrinthine spaces as if it was participating in a big game”. www.teatrodelossentidos.com Teatro Dimitri (Verscio, Switzerland) More than a place for high-quality performing arts, the Teatro Dimitri aims to be a space for inspiring meetings, a place for shared experiences. The program comprises contemporary theatre, dance performances, live concerts, family and children’s performances and thematic festivals. It is completed by shows featuring members of the Dimitri family, as well as students and graduates of the Accademia Teatro Dimitri, one of four theatre schools in Switzerland. ww.teatrodimitri.ch Workcenter Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards (Pontedera, Italy) The research currently conducted at the Workcenter involves both extremities of what Jerzy Grotowski described as “the chain” of performing arts: “Art as vehicle” at one end, and “Art as presentation” at the other. The core distinction between these two poles of performing arts is that in “Art as vehicle”, the work on performance structures has as its aim the artist’s work on him/herself, while in “Art as presentation”, as in theatre for example, the performance opuses are, by means of the way in which they are structured, oriented towards the perception of the spectator. The current Workcenter research in its totality explores the living ways in which influences can shuttle back and forth between the two extremities of “the chain” of performing arts, discovering new meanings and content in performing. Since 2007 the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards hosts two creative teams: Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle directed by Thomas Richards, and the Open Program directed by Mario Biagini, Associate Director of the Workcenter. www.theworkcenter.org

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A selection of Europe-based international networks, websites and cross-regional bodies (private and public) for performing arts funding1 Armando Rotondi Institute of the Arts Barcelona / Liverpool John Moores University *****

The digital sources selected in this section have been chosen considering the following specific criteria: 1. Coherence with the area of interest of the research and the target groups; 2. An active profile; 3. An

international profile; 4. The presence of a direct call for funding or

database/search engine for external call for funding. Information and descriptions are taken and adapted from the official mission statement of the organisations. *****

Allianz Cultural Foundation The Allianz Cultural Foundation is a non-profit organisation established in Munich by the then Allianz AG (now Allianz SE) in the year 2000. In January of 2012, the foundation moved into the Berlin Allianz Forum at Pariser Platz 6 along with the Allianz Foundation for Sustainability. Allianz Cultural Foundation both funds outside projects and runs its own initiatives. It accepts grant applications on a European scale for projects that comply with the foundation’s funding guidelines, and it co-operates with international partner organisations and institutions in planning and development of our initiatives. As a general rule, the foundation funds joint non-profit projects involving partners from at least three different countries. Aside from demonstrating the requisite artistic or scholarly qualities, projects must make clear that all co-operating partners are equal partners, equally responsible for their project’s conceptual and financial planning and execution. Projects should be designed to create durable connections between the participating The following descriptions are faithful reproductions of the information, data and style of the single websites of the selected institutions and organizations. Only few minor changes were made. 1

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actors. Its general focus is on cultural projects – including the performing arts – that promote exchange and encounters in Europe and around the Mediterranean, as well as discursive events in the fields of European educational work, contemporary visual and performing arts, literature and music. www.kulturstiftung.allianz.de Anna Lindh Foundation – Euromed The Anna Lindh Foundation is an international organisation working from the mediterranean to promote intercultural and civil society dialogue in the face of growing mistrust and polarisation. The Foundation focuses its intercultural action around three main pillars: 1. Empowering young voices; 2. Influencing policy makers; 3. Building a movement for dialogue and exchange in the face of growing mistrust and polarisation amongst societies. The foundation encompasses 42 Countries drawn from other Mediterranean area and it also awards grants also for culture, including performing arts. www.annalindhfoundation.org Asia-Europe Foundation – Creative Encounters and Mobility First Creative Encounters: Cultural Partnerships between Asia and Europe supports an existing grassroots demand for ongoing support to co-productions among Asian and European artists. Throughout this project, professional artists from Asia and Europe are brought together in creative and collaborative relationships to create new artworks. Focus rests on contemporary arts disciplines, focusing on limited support available to newer art forms vis-à-vis traditional art forms. Creative Encounters was launched as a project series in 2010 and nine editions of the project took place between 2010 and 2016. Selection was through annual competitive open calls for applications. Having completed a six-year cycle, an evaluation was proposed in 2017 to better understand the long-term impact of the project series and the suitability of the project format to support future Asia-Europe co-creation projects in the contemporary arts. www.asef.org Barents Euro-Arctic Co-operation (Cultural Programme) A working alliance in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region was launched in 1993 on two levels: intergovernmental – as Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and inter-regional, as Barents Regional Council. Its chief mission to make various financial mechanisms available to support multilateral project co-operation in the Barents region. The most important funding sources are the national and regional budgets of the Barents countries, various EU Programmes and the Nordic Council of Ministers. In addition to this, International Financial Institutions offer financing for investment projects in the region, hosted by Barents Euro-Arctic Co-operation The aim of the Joint Working Group on Culture (JWGC) is to strengthen cultural identities, multicultural dialogue and cultural ties between the Barents countries and the regions. The JWGC strategy highlights the importance of capacity building and exchange. It also encourages facilitating and promoting networking, creating different kinds of new cultural meeting places, Armando Rotondi Mapping #5 – A selection of Europe-based international networks, websites and cross-regional bodies

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focusing on the strong relationship between culture and cultural and creative industries, as well as creating new international opportunities for strengthening the competitiveness of the cultural operators in the Barents region. https://www.barentscooperation.org Berliner Theatretreffen International Forum The International Forum is a 18-day scholarship programme that promotes young theatre makers from all parts of the world. The open call is aimed at theatre makers up to the age of 35 from the fields of directing, acting, design, dramaturgy, writing, music, video, performance, choreography and other artistic disciplines. The International Forum sees itself as a platform for comprehensive theoretical and practical exchange. The curriculum includes presentation by selected theatre makers and their aesthetic practice in lectures, the presentation of workshops by renowned artists, the involvement of experts and scholars drawn from various disciplines, opportunities to see guest theatre productions invited to Theatretreffen and Stückemarkt. Plus regular open space events and discussions regularly take place on contemporary art as well as the organisation of excursions into the diverse cultural landscape of Berlin. www.berlinerfestspiele.de Circostrada Since 2003 Circostrada Network has been working to develop and structure the fields of Circus and Street Arts in Europe and beyond. With more than 100 members from over 30 countries, it contributes to build a sustainable future for these sectors by empowering cultural players through the production of resources and actions of observation and research, professional exchanges, advocacy, capacity-building and information. www.circostrada.org Commission Internationale du Théâtre Francophone (CITF) Based in Canada, the CITF is financed by the government of France, Belgium and Canada. It aims to support theatre and performing arts, multilateral projects and diffusion of theatre in Canada, France, Belgium, Switzerland and other francophone countries via regular programme grants and experimental programme funding. www.citf-info.net Creative Europe Creative Europe is the European Commission’s framework programme for support to the culture and audio-visual sectors. Creative Europe’s aims are to: help the cultural and creative sectors seize the opportunities of the digital age and globalisation; enable the sectors to reach their economic potential, contributing to sustainable growth, jobs, and social cohesion; give Europe’s culture and media sectors access to new international opportunities, markets, and audiences. ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/culture Armando Rotondi Mapping #5 – A selection of Europe-based international networks, websites and cross-regional bodies

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Culture Action Europe (CAE) CAE is the major European network of cultural organisations, artists, activists, academics & policy-makers. CAE is the first port of call for informed opinion and debate about arts and cultural policy in Europe. As the only cross-sectoral network, CAE represents all sub-sectors in culture: from performing arts, literature, visual arts, design and cross-arts initiatives to community centres and activist groups. cultureactioneurope.org Culture & Creativity The Culture and Creativity website was created in 2015 within the framework of an overarching EU programme aiming to promote cultural contribution to the social and economic development of the six Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Since then, the website has become a popular and useful resource for professionals of the cultural and creative industries. After the end of the Programme, the website continues to operate with funding from the British Council. www.culturepartnership.eu FestivalFinder â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Europe for Festivals /Festivals for Europe FestivalFinder is an online search tool that allows audiences to locate all arts festivals, from music to theatre and street arts to dance and literature across 45 countries in Europe. It helps to navigate international audiences, festival lovers, festival makers, artists, travellers, academics, journalists, bloggers, policy makers and city developers through the world of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diverse cultural space. It is rooted in, and steered by, the generic festival community with the support of the European Union. www.festivalfinder.eu East European Performing Arts Platform (EEPAP) The East European Performing Arts Platform (EEPAP) supports the development of contemporary performing arts (dance and theatre) in 18 countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The aim is to facilitate international exchange of artists, professionals, curators and thinkers in the field of contemporary performing arts in Europe and to develop educational programs rooted in the context of the contemporary society. EEPAP focuses on 18 countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. www.eepap.culture.pl

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ERSTE Foundation ERSTE Foundation is the biggest Austrian savings bank foundation. It uses the profit from its shares to support the development of societies in Central and South Eastern Europe, including investment in the performing arts. ERSTE Foundation’s funding is focused on three thematic areas: social innovation, European cohesion and democracy and contemporary culture. The Foundation works in long-term collaboration with organisations and people who have a great deal of expertise in their specialist areas. The Foundation also sees its role as a one that works for the common good in creating a network of various actors in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe and beyond. www.erstestiftung.org EURODRAM Eurodram is a European network for drama in translation, founded in 2001 by the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient (House of Europe and the Orient). It consists of approximately 300 members organised across about 30 committees. Its main objective is to promote new drama in translation from Europe, Central Asia and the Mediterranean, making it available both to theatre professionals and audiences in the region in the spirit of independence, equity and linguistic diversity. Eurodram operates on a biennial schedule. In even-numbered years, each committee selects three original plays written in the committee’s own language, and recommends them for translation into other European languages. In odd-numbered years, committees select three plays from works translated into the committee’s language, with the goal of having them published and/or staged. www.eurodram.org European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance (EASTAP) The association is a place in which to develop the discipline as well as search for new paths. It will stimulate a more intense dialogue between theatre, performance scholars and artists across Europe. www.eastap.com European Cultural Foundation The European Cultural Foundation nurtures a socially engaged and culturally rooted civil society across Europe. It is committed to making a tangible impact on civil society, citizen initiatives, public opinion and policy proposals. Furthermore, it seeks to combat the fragmenting forces jeopardising peace and social progress across Europe. The European Cultural Foundation supports cultural change-makers and their projects via grants, exchanges, online platforms and incubator programmes. It works with a variety of hdifferent programmes and grants such as Tandem and the STEP Travel Grants for artist mobility. www.culturalfoundation.eu

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European Festivals Association (EFA) EFA unites distinguished music, dance, theatre and multidisciplinary arts festivals from Europe and beyond since 1952. Today it connects about 100 festivals and festival associations across 40 countries. EFA members are the core element that make the association such an open, influential, international place for any festival that wants to be part of a bigger festival community. The associationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission is to unite and represent its member festivals across Europe and the world by contributing to the artistic life of Europe. www.efa-aef.eu European Network of Information Centres for the Performing Arts (ENICPA) ENICPA is a network of specialists from Europe specialising in the field of performing arts information, documentation and collections. The aim of the network is to train professionals in the field via thesharing expertise and knowledge. ENICPA consists of 17 member organisations from 11 different European countries. www.enicpa.info European Theatre Convention (ETC) The European Theatre Convention (ETC) is a network of European public theatres founded in 1988 to promote contemporary drama theatre, to support the mobility of artists and to develop artistic exchange throughout Europe and beyond. It has become the largest pan-European network of its kind, representing over 40 member theatres in 25 countries, 8.000.000 theatre goers, more than 11,000 taxpayers employed by public theatres, thousands of artists in over 20 countries and puts on approximately 16,000 performances and public events per year. ETC is an artistic theatre collaboration network committed to developing international collaboration and artistic mobility projects with a focus on multilingualism, artistic education and European citizens in theatre. It is a professional platform for theatre makers with a mission to encourage intercultural dialogue, organise meetings, invest in education and training opportunities, and initiate the production of ongoing research and publications. www.etc-cte.org European Theatre Lab The European Theatre Lab is Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first think tank devoted to researching a digital strategy for theatre. A pioneering mix of workshops, conferences and theatrical performances across Europe, it comprises an international group of artists, scholars and scientists from theatres and research institutions. Conceived by the European Theatre Convention, the Lab increases civic engagement by bringing theatre to new audiences and sectors. www.europeantheatrelab.eu

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European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) EUNIC is an European Union cultural network supported by the the Creative Europe fund working in the areas of cultural diplomacy and cultural relations. Its Crossroads for Culture initiative is aimed at strengthening EUNICâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacity to enable cultural players from all EU Member states to work transnationally as well as to internationalise cultural and creative sectors and further enhance European influence and appeal inside and outside of Europe. www.eunicglobal.eu Fabulamundi Fabulamundi is a co-operative project among theatres, festivals and cultural organisation spannng ten 10 EU Countries (ie: Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Romania, Austria, Belgium, UK, Poland and Czech Republic). The network aims to support and promote contemporary playwriting across Europe, in order to reinforce and enhance the activities and strategies of the professionals and artists working in the sector and to provide theatre authors and professionals with opportunities of networking, multicultural encounters and general professional development. www.fabulamundi.eu International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ) ASSITEJ unites theatres, organisations and individuals throughout the world dedicated to creating theatre for children and young people. ASSITEJ is dedicated to the artistic, cultural and educational rights of children and young people across the globe and advocates on behalf of all children regardless of nationality, cultural identity, ability, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion. ASSITEJ brings people together so that they can share knowledge and practice within the field of theatre for children and young people in order to deepen understandings, develop practice, create new opportunities and strengthen the global sector. Members include national centres, professional networks, and individuals drawn from around 100 countries across the world. www.assitej-international.org International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM) IETM arts is a network of over 450 performing arts organisations and individual members working in the contemporary performing arts worldwide: theatre, dance, circus, interdisciplinary live art forms, new media. Members include festivals, companies, producers, theatres, research and resource centres, universities and institutional bodies. www.ietm.org

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International Network of Italian Theatre (INIT) INIT originated from the compelling urge, felt by a group of Italian theatre scholars, to become proactive and visible as an interconnected web of Italian theatre workers. Even though Italian theatre is studied in different countries and continents, it is presented in a rather isolated manner, almost as a scene-stealer, or as a prima donna individual performances aimed at catching the audience’s attention during the fleeting time of the presentation/appearance. The Network’s vision is to create a platform for mutual support and cooperation among theatre scholars and practitioners to promote Italian theatre internationally and to make a greater impact on the community as a whole. https://www.newinit.org International Theatre Institute (ITI) ITI was the joint brainchild of the first UNESCO Director General, Sir Julian Huxley, and the playwright and novelist, JB Priestley in 1948, just after the Second World War, and at the beginning of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain divided the East and the West. The aim of the founders of ITI was to create an organisation aligned with UNESCO’s goals on culture, education and the arts, and which would focus its endeavours on improving the status of all members of the performing arts professions. The founders envisaged an organisation that created platforms for international exchange and facilitated engagement in the education of the performing arts – for beginners and professionals alike – as well as harnessing the performing arts for mutual understanding and peace. www.iti-worldwide.org International Visegrad Fund The International Visegrad Fund is an international donor organization, established in 2000 by the governments of the Visegrad Group countries – Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – to promote regional co-operation in the Visegrad region (V4) as well as between the V4 region and other countries, especially in the Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership regions. www.visegradfund.org Japan Foundation (PAJE – Performing Arts Japan for Europe) Performing Arts Japan (PAJ) provides financial assistance to Japan-related performing art projects in Europe (PAJ Europe) wit the objective of introducing Japanese performing arts to local audiences in these areas, or to facilitate exchange between leading artists in Japan and Europe. https://www.jpf.go.jp/e/project/culture/perform/supportlist_perform/paj/PAJ.html#E

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Kultur Kontakt Nord (Nordic Culture Point) The Nordic Culture Point is a cultural institution located in Helsinki, Finland. Part of the official Nordic co-operation, it has three primary functions: 1. The day to day administration of four Nordic grant programmes; 2. The administration of a library and cultural centre in downtown Helsinki; 3; Organising various events. The official Nordic cooperation is conducted within the framework of the Nordic Council of Ministers, where the governments cooperate, and in the Nordic Council, which is the parliamentarians’ forum for cooperation. The cooperation aims to strengthen Nordic and regional interests and values, as well as to promote culture. The Nordic Culture Point annually supports about 500 cultural projects via four cultural grant programmes that are financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers. In addition, the institution arranges every year hundreds of events in Helsinki and the rest of Finland, as well as runs the only Nordic-oriented library in Finland and a Nordic cultural centre. The institution’s most important target audiences are those who work within the field of arts and culture in the Nordics and the Baltic States. Nordic Culture Point administers four grant programmes, which are divided into six different funding options: 1. Culture and art programmes; 2. Network funding; 3. Mobility funding; 4. Funding for artist residencies; 5. NORDBUK grant programme; 5. Volt (Languages). All these programmes provide the opportunity to create culture, conduct projects and create meetings between artists and cultural workers in the Nordic region and the Baltic states. www.nordiskkulturkontakt.org German National Association of Independent Performing Arts The German Association of Independent Performing Arts is the federal umbrella organisation of all state associations for professional independent performing arts in Germany. Founded in 1990, it is today one of the largest theatre associations in the country. www.darstellende-kuenste.de Nordic Council of Ministers The Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Council are the main forums for official Nordic co-operation, which involves Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. The Council has a special workstream dedicated to information on funding for projects, including cultural undertakings (arts, performing arts, literature and music) and different options for grants, invitations to tender and calls for applications. www.norden.org/en/funding-opportunities

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The Nordic Culture Fund contributes to positive artistic and cultural development in the Nordic Region by promoting co-operation between Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Ă&#x2026;land. It does so by gathering knowledge and information, building networks and providing financial support. The Nordic Culture Fundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grants are financed from the budget of the Nordic Council Ministers which is approved by the Nordic Council. The fund therefore forms part of the official Nordic collaboration. The Nordic Culture Fund has, according to its agreement, the potential for taking receipt of other funds for its purposes. The Nordic Culture Fund allocates grants on three levels: OPSTART which accepts applications all year round, project funding which has three annual deadlines and priority theme funding pools with specific criteria and application deadlines. New strategies (2019-2022) for fund allocation have been published on the official websites. www.nordiskkulturfond.org PEARLE Live Performance Europe Pearle is the Performing Arts Employers Associations League Europe, the European sector federation of music and performing arts organisations. Pearle represents, via its members, more than 10,000 managers of theatres, concert venues, theatre production companies, orchestras, operas, ballet and dance companies, festivals, promoters and other professional organisations in the performing arts in Europe. It is recognised by the European Commission as the European employers association to represent management at the European level. Pearle meets the workers represented by EAEA, the European Arts and Entertainment Alliance which regroups FIA, FIM and Uni-Mei, at the European sectoral social dialogue meetings for the live performance sector. It European social partners discuss a variety of themes established in a work programme. The current work programme (2018-2019) includes items such as: social dialogue, health and safety, mobility, training and education, the economic situation of the sector, diversity and gender equality and any other EU initiatives which impact the sector. The European social partner undertakes several kinds of joint activities. Recent outcomes include: development of European online interactive risk assessment (OiRA) tools for venues and for production, and guidance for musicians and ensembles travelling with musical instruments containing protected (CITES) species. www.pearle.eu On The Move On the Move is a cultural mobility information network with more than 40 members in over 20 countries across Europe and internationally. On the Move mission is to encourage and facilitate cross-border mobility and co-operation, contributing to building up a vibrant and shared European cultural space that is strongly connected worldwide www.on-the-move.org

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Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) OIF represents one of the biggest linguistic zones in the world. Its mission is to embody the active solidarity between its 84 member states and governments (58 members and 26 observers), which together represent over one-third of the United Nations’ member states and account for a population of over 900 million people, including 274 million French speakers. OIF organises political activities and actions of multilateral cooperation that benefit French-speaking populations. Its actions respect cultural and linguistic diversity and serve to promote the French language, peace and sustainable development. It has concluded 33 cooperation agreements with international and regional organisations and has established permanent dialogue between the major international linguistic zones (ie: the English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Arab-speaking zones). Among its activities, in the area of “cultural diversity”, the financial and institutional support of theatre and performing arts projects. www.francophonie.org/Industries-culturelles-et.html OutdoorArtsUK OutdoorArtsUK is a national membership and strategic organisation that aims to bring together the many diverse parts of the outdoor arts sector. OutdoorArtsUK celebrates the wonderful work, amazing talent and tremendous achievements of the brilliant individuals, companies and organisations working in this most accessible of art forms. www.outdoorartsuk.org Roberto Cimetta Fund The Roberto Cimetta Fund, is an international non-profit making organisation that was created in 1999 to respond rapidly and directly to individual artists and cultural managers wishing to travel in order to develop contemporary artistic cooperation projects in the Euro-Arab geographical zone and beyond. It is essentially the mobility fund for artists and cultural operators in Europe, the Arab world and the Middle East. The fund acts as an intermediary, establishing partnerships with public or private funders for the travel grants programme. These funders contribute to the general fund (open to all travel grant requests corresponding to the fund’s criteria, whatever the destinations, the artistic disciplines or travel routes) or define a specific funding line (specific criteria or geographic locations). The fund works constantly to renew the funding lines and develop new opportunities in line with current cultural settings and the artists and cultural operators’ needs. www.cimettafund.org Touring Artists Touring artists, an information portal for artists and creatives working internationally, provides comprehensive information on visas/residence, artist status and contracts, transport/customs, taxes, social security, other insurances, and copyright issues. Through a joint project of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) and the Internationale Gesellschaft der Bildenden Künste (IGBK), these topics have initially been Armando Rotondi Mapping #5 – A selection of Europe-based international networks, websites and cross-regional bodies

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examined for both the performing arts and the visual arts. Since most questions and answers are relevant regardless of any discipline and the portal is used by different actors of the arts and cultural industries, the information service is being expanded continuously. www.touring-artists.info Union Internationale de la Marionnette (UNIMA) The oldest international theatre organisation in the world, the UNion Internationale de la MArionnette (UNIMA) is a non governmental organisation (NGO) affiliated to UNESCO. Its members come from all over the world contribute to the development of puppetry art. Present in more than 90 countries, UNIMA is a platform to exchange and to share between people who practise puppetry (amateurs and professional), or who work on this art (researchers, historians et cetera) or who are passionate about this discipline. It also supports meetings, conferences, festivals, exchanges and collaborations, opportunities to co-operate with people in all areas of puppetry (therapy, teaching, training, research, documentation, collections, exhibitions, et cetera.), and supports collecting and distributing information and publications about research, courses and workshops. www.unima.org

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international profile; 4. The presence of a direct call for funding or

database/search engine for external call for funding. Information and descriptions are taken and adapted from the official mission statement of the organisations. *****

EUNIC-affiliated institutions Austria Ă&#x2013;sterreich Institut GmbH www.oesterreichinstitut.at Austria Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs www.bmeia.gv.at Cultural cooperation and funding: www.bmeia.gv.at/en/european-foreignpolicy/international-cultural-policy/

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Belgium Wallonie-Bruxelles International www.wbi.be Cultural cooperation and funding: www.wbi.be/fr/page/modes-dappuis-au-secteurculturel#.XB-fClxKjIU; www.wbtd.be/ (specific about theatre) Belgium Flemish Department of Foreign Affairs www.fdfa.be/en/home Cultural cooperation and funding: www.fdfa.be/en/culture-science/culture Bulgaria Bulgarian Ministry of Culture www.mc.government.bg Croatia Foundation Croatia House www.mvep.hr/en/special-projects/croatia-house/ Cultural cooperation and funding: www.mvep.hr/files/file/2014/zhk-rules-engl.pdf Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture Cyprus www.moec.gov.cy Cultural cooperation and funding: www.moec.gov.cy/en/european_funding_unit.html Czech Republic Czech Centres www.czechcentres.cz Denmark The Danish Cultural Institute www.danishculture.com/ Cultural cooperation and funding: https://www.danishculture.com/what-we-do-2/ Estonia Estonian Institute www.estinst.ee/en/about-us/estonian-institute/ Cultural cooperation and funding: www.estinst.ee/en/estonian-culture/estonian-theatre/ (specific about theatre)

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Finland The Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes www.instituutit.fi France Foundation Alliance Française www.fondation-alliancefr.org Cultural cooperation and funding: www.fondation-alliancefr.org/?cat=1459 (including Le Théâtre Alliance Française) France French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs www.diplomatie.gouv.fr Cultural cooperation and funding: www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreignpolicy/cultural-diplomacy/ France Institut Français de Paris www.institutfrancais.com Cultural cooperation and funding: www.institutfrancais.com/fr/theatre; www.institutfrancais.com/fr/cirque-arts-de-la-rue-marionnettes (bothlinks specific for theatre and performing arts) Germany Goethe-Institut www.goethe.de Cultural cooperation and funding: www.goethe.de/en/kul/ser/rep.html (residencies); https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/tut.html (theatre) Germany ifa – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations www.ifa.de Greece Hellenic Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs www.mfa.gr Greece Hellenic Foundation for Culture www.hfc-worldwide.org

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Hungary Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (via Balassi Institute) www.kormany.hu/en/ministry-of-foreign-affairs-and-trade Cultural cooperation and funding: www.balassiintezet.hu/en/balassi-institute-hq/ Ireland Culture Ireland /www.cultureireland.ie/ Cultural cooperation and funding: www.cultureireland.ie/funding Italy SocietĂ Dante Alighieri www.ladante.it Italy Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (via Italian Culture Institutes network) www.esteri.it/mae/it/ Cultural cooperation and funding: www.esteri.it/mae/it/politica_estera/cultura/reteiic.html (on Italian Culture Institutes) Latvia Latvian Institute www.latvia.eu/latvian-institute Lithuania Lithuanian Culture Institute lithuanianculture.lt/?lang=en Cultural cooperation and funding: lithuanianculture.lt/projects/?lang=en; lithuanianculture.lt/programs/?lang=en Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs www.maee.gouvernement.lu/en.html Malta Arts Council Malta www.artscouncilmalta.org/ Cultural cooperation and funding: www.artscouncilmalta.org/pages/fundsopportunities/our-funding-programmes/

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Netherlands Dutch Culture www.dutchculture.nl Cultural cooperation and funding: www.dutchculture.nl/en/residencies (residencies); www.dutchculture.nl/en/funding (funding) Poland Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (via Polish Centres/Institutes abroad) www.www.msz.gov.pl Portugal Instituto CamĂľes www.www.instituto-camoes.pt Cultural cooperation and funding: www.instituto-camoes.pt/activity/o-quefazemos/cooperacao/cooperacao-na-pratica Romania Romanian Cultural Institute www.icr.ro Cultural cooperation and funding: www.icr.ro/categorii/burse Slovak Republic Slovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs www.mzv.sk Slovenia Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport www.mizs.gov.si Cultural cooperation and funding: www.mizs.gov.si/en/areas_of_work/ Spain Instituto Cervantes www.cervantes.es/default.htm Cultural cooperation and funding: www.cervantes.es/cultura_espanola/informacion.htm Spain AECID www.aecid.es Cultural cooperation and funding: www.aecid.es/EN/cultura; http://www.aecid.es/EN/grants-and-assistantships (on funding)

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Sweden Swedish Institute www.si.se / Cultural cooperation and funding: www.si.se/en/events-projects/ (on current projects); www.si.se/en/apply/scholarships/ (scholarship); www.si.se/en/apply/funding-grants/ (funding) United Kingdom British Council www.www.britishcouncil.org/ Cultural cooperation and funding: www.britishcouncil.org/programmes Institutions not-affiliated to EUNIC Belgium Flemish Government: Department of Culture, Youth, Sport & Media www.cjsm.vlaanderen.be Germany DAAD www.daad.de Spain (Catalonia) Institut Ramon Llull www.llull.cat Cultural cooperation and funding: www.llull.cat/catala/subvencions/esceniques_intro.cfm (specific for theatre) Ireland Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaion www.artscouncil.ie Cultural cooperation and funding: http://www.artscouncil.ie/funding/ Italy MIBAC â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita Culturali www.beniculturali.it Italy Agenzia Nazionale del Turismo www.enit.it

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Portugal Direcção-Geral das Artes www.dgartes.pt Cultural cooperation and funding: https://www.dgartes.gov.pt/pt/atividades/apoio_as_artes; https://www.dgartes.gov.pt/pt/vnode/6 (national funding); https://www.dgartes.gov.pt/pt/vnode/7 (international cooperation) United Kingdom (England) Arts Council of England www.artscouncil.org.uk Cultural cooperation and funding: www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) Arts Council of Northern Ireland www.artscouncil-ni.org Cultural cooperation and funding: http://artscouncil-ni.org/funding United Kingdom (Scotland) Creative Scotland www.creativescotland.com Cultural cooperation and funding: www.creativescotland.com/funding United Kingdom (Wales) Arts Council of Wales www.arts.wales Cultural cooperation and funding: www.arts.wales/funding

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